fbpx

News > The European Movement International in 2022

Article Author

secretariat European Movement International

Article Details:

  • 19th December 2022 - 14:29 UTC

The European Movement International in 2022

2022 saw the return of war to our continent, with the brutal and unjustified invasion of Ukraine by Russia reshaping the geopolitical balance and the EU’s priorities. Once again we were reminded of the importance of European solidarity & cooperation as the EU stood up to Russian aggression, supported Ukraine, welcomed Ukrainian refugees and took joint action to protect Europeans from the energy crisis that followed the war, while continuously defending and strengthening democracy across our continent.

We strived to do our part through our advocacy, communications, events, stakeholder engagement and citizen outreach.

We applied creative and innovative approaches, made the most of new technologies and cutting-edge research and teamed up with our members and partners to promote our common goals. We organised a range of online activities and utilised the EMI’s communications channels to strengthen the voice of civil society in Europe, promote European cooperation in these trying times, reach out beyond our usual audience and increase citizens’ engagement with the EU. We accelerated our advocacy efforts and took an active part in the Conference on the Future of Europe through the EMI’s representatives in the Plenary and by utilising the extensive European Movement International Caucus.

Below is a summary of our work. We look forward to what 2023 has to bring.

Our Projects

REAL DEAL

This year we kicked off REAL DEAL, an EU-funded project aiming at promoting citizens’ active participation in the green and just transition. To achieve it, the project brings together Europe’s leading researchers on deliberative democracy and the largest Civil Society Organisations working in the fields of environment and democracy.

We are using evidence-based strategic communications in order to promote positive narratives about the importance of deliberative democracy in the context of the green and just transition.

We are also creating a community of Europeans who are taking action to build a new model of environmental citizenship for Europe; a model where Europeans are placed at the heart of the decision-making process, making a REAL DEAL for both people and the planet. You can sign up on: www.realdeal.eu

Listen to Europe

We continued to expand the Listen to People project and database and reach out to more pro-European organisations working to enhance their messaging and communication, testing citizens’ outreach campaigns based on the lessons learnt so far, conducting public surveys, social media listening and campaigns in EU countries. In 2022 we have finalised the third phase of LTP and our digital communication campaigns, implemented in partnership with National Councils and civil society partners, reached 21.6 million people across Europe and achieved the actual engagement of more than 4 million Europeans. Twelve capacity-building and knowledge-sharing Democracy Tables gathered 1600 participants, offline and online. Our approach to positively influencing societal narratives at scale was presented to around 100 European and national CSOs at the European Parliament’s kick-off event on the occasion of the launch of the EP election 2024 strategy.

Retaking the initiative: promoting positive narratives to pre-emptively counter-balance disinformation

The project consists of social media campaigns in six European countries aiming at spreading positive narratives on selected topics concerning the war in Ukraine to counterbalance negative messages and disinformation coming from hostile actors. The campaigns, co-sponsored by NATO, reached more than 2.7 million persuadable, middle audiences, especially youth, in six countries, each relevant for a different reason for the robustness of the EU response to the war. We applied evidence-based strategic communications in social media campaigns populating digital space with a positive narrative about the defense of Ukraine, the EU’s sanctions against Russia, support for Ukrainian refugees and resilience and preservation of our values. Moreover, we organised a physical event entitled “The War Within: The war in Ukraine and the assault on European democracy” which gathered EP, EEAS and NATO representatives and a diverse Brussels audience of 80 people from civil society, social partners, youth organisations, Member State representatives and opinion-shapers.

Women of Europe Awards

For the seventh year running, the 2022 edition of the Women of Europe Awards, organised in partnership with the European Women’s Lobby, was held in person this year in the BELvue museum and featured four inspiring winners: Sanna Marin (Woman in Power), Olga Rudenko (Women in Action), Laura De Dilectis (Woman in Business) and Viviane Ogou Corbi (Woman in Youth Activism). Our campaign promoting the event reached more than 4 million people across Europe on social media, and the brand was advertised on billboards and in transit stops in the EU Quarter in Brussels, most notably outside the European Commission building – viewed by tens of thousands. See more on our website and social media campaign.

Talking Europe

We continued our partnership with the European Commission on a series of online discussions launched in 2020, entitled Talking Europe, which aims to foster debate on the EU’s work and the effect it has on the lives of citizens. These one-to-one discussions have so far featured Stefano Sannino, Secretary General of the EEAS; Joost Korte, Director General of DG EMPL; Maciej Popowski, Acting Director General of DG NEAR; Monique Pariat, Director General of DG HOME; Salla Saastamoinen, Acting Director General of DG JUST; Raffaele Mauro Petriccione, Director General of DG CLIMA; Ditte Juul Jorgensen, Director General of DG ENER; Themis Christophidou, Director General of DG for EAC – Education, Youth, Sport and Culture; Wolfgang Burtscher, Director General of DG AGRI; Sabine Weyand, Director General of DG TRADE; Dubravka Šuica, Commission Vice-President for Democracy and Demography; Pia Ahrenkilde-Hansen, Director General of DG COMM.

EuropeanChats

In 2022, we continued the series of online discussions entitled EuropeanChats launched in 2020, gathering members of our network from across Europe for informal discussions on different issues surrounding the EU’s response to the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the debate on the future of Europe. This year’s discussions featured the European Movement offices in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, as well as Eurodiaconia, Erasmus Student Network, EUROMIL, and the European Environmental Bureau.

Our Policy and Influencing

The past year has presented Europe and civil society with new challenges along with familiar ones. Through our thought leadership and advocacy efforts, we worked to put together and promote positions and ideas from the European Movement International network to address the challenges Europe and the rest of the world are facing and advocate for a future for our continent built on the founding principles of the EU.

Bringing our member organisations together in our Political Committees, we developed new policy positions and utilised existing ones. Take a look at our main policy proposals that guide our current work and get in touch if you would like to join us or support our work.

We used our policy positions to reach and engage different stakeholders:

  • Targeted advocacy vis-à-vis policy-makers and institutions. We engaged with a multitude of policy-makers and we reached over 6000 stakeholders, including MEPs, Member States’ Permanent Representatives, and senior stakeholders from the EU institutions international organisations, social partners, civil society, academia, think-tanks and more.
  • Policy emails. We sent 25 email blasts promoting our policy positions targeting a very diverse audience of policy-makers, including 600 MEPs, 27 Permanent Representatives, over 1000 senior stakeholders from the EU institutions, Member States and international organisations, and over 2800 stakeholders from EMI’s member organisations and European civil society organisations, think tanks, research centres, and social partners.

Our policy and advocacy work focused on various areas, consistent with our strategic priorities and our annual work plan.

Conference on the Future of Europe

We published and used for our advocacy and communication:

To promote our positions and engage relevant stakeholders we also held:

War in Ukraine

We published and used for our advocacy and communication:

To promote our positions and engage relevant stakeholders we also held:

Democracy, Values and Citizen Participation

We published and used for our advocacy and communication:

To promote our positions and engage relevant stakeholders we also held:

The Rule of Law

We published and used for our advocacy and communication:

To promote our positions and engage relevant stakeholders we also held:

European Green Deal

We published and used for our advocacy and communication:

To promote our positions and engage relevant stakeholders we also held:

Enlargement and Western Balkans

We published and used for our advocacy and communication:

To promote our positions and engage relevant stakeholders we also held:

Security and Defence & Europe in the World

We published and used for our advocacy and communication:

To promote our positions and engage relevant stakeholders we also held:

  • A “Talking Europe” event with Stefano Sannino, Secretary General of the EEAS to discuss the recent work of the European External Action Service, developments in the Ukraine war and the Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Our Communications

This year has been another record-breaking year! Our content and campaigns have reached more Europeans than ever: 38 million, to be exact. By using and applying polling data and research to segment and target audiences, we have been able to create tailored content reaching out to and engaging not only our core pro-European supporters, but also, more broadly, citizens that usually operate outside our usual audience. Correspondingly, we have seen exponential growth in our engagement across all platforms this year, and we are happy to have been able to contribute to building the capacity of several of our National Councils to do the same.

Europe Day

Building on the success of our joint campaigns these past few years, this year our network’s Europe Day campaign remained digital and consisted of three variations of campaign content intended to build solidarity with Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees. The campaign was intended to reach and influence not only our base audiences, but also more moderate audiences who operate just outside our normal spheres of communication. This year, the campaign was promoted in 13 countries and in 13 languages. By doing so, we were also able to effectively expand our base audiences and increase the number of European citizens we reach with pro-European and pro-democratic messages.

Listen to People Campaign

Our work on Listen to People continues to evolve in a great way. This year, we continued developing our extensive database looking at the drivers of behaviours and attitudes of European citizens towards democracy & authoritarianism, the unjust Russian invasion of Ukraine, and its consequences for the future of the continent. Our intention with this work is to equip CSOs with knowledge that will allow them to better communicate with a variety of different audiences, positively engaging people also outside core supporters. Moreover, this year, we were also able to test citizens’ outreach campaigns based on the lessons learnt so far, reaching a record of 21.6 million citizens, based on data from opinion polls and social media listening in nine countries.

REAL DEAL Campaign

As part of the green and just transition, in our work at Real Deal we are using evidence-based communication strategies to promote positive narratives about citizen engagement with the green transition. Our narrative change campaign has generated 2.2 million digital impressions and engaged more than 800,000 people in the first few months of the project. This project aims for a future in which Europeans are an integral part of the decision-making process, making a REAL DEAL for both people and the planet.

Women of Europe Campaign

The Women of Europe Awards 2022 were well-promoted over our social media channels and received a lot of external interest, reaching a record of 4.1 million people. Thanks to our promotion of the WoE Awards, the nominees, the shortlisted, the jury, and the winners via social media, we raised awareness throughout Europe for the Awards and the important cause they serve. Key to that was our media partnership with Euronews, as well as our digital partnership with Meta. If you missed it, or want to rewatch it, the main highlights of the ceremony will be available on our website soon.

Retaking the Initiative Campaign

This year, we ran a new campaign aimed at counterbalancing negative messages and disinformation surrounding the war in Ukraine with the aim of further supporting positive narratives favouring solidarity with Ukrainian refugees in Europe. The campaigns reached an audience of more than 2.7 million persuadable citizens spread across six European countries: Italy, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Finland, and France. Using evidence-based communication strategies, our content related to defence of and support for Ukraine on individual, national and European levels, resulting in 4.3 million digital impressions and in 1.8 million of our audience engaging directly with our messaging.

Engaging the European Movement International Network

The European Movement International Network encompasses over 80 member organisations, both National Councils and International Associations, bringing together European civil society, employers, trade unions, NGOs, political parties, local government and academia. This year we worked closely with all member organisations and brought together our network in various constellations to co-create the direction of the European Movement International.

To that end we held:

  • 2 Federal Assemblies;
  • 1 Members’ Council;
  • 3 Board meetings;
  • 15 Political Committee meetings;
  • 7 Working Group meetings.

Our Events in 2022

Click here to receive more information about the activities of the European Movement International

Get in touch to find out how to join the European Movement International

  • Print news
  • 0 Comments

Policies

More news

Your email will not be published
Cancel reply
EUROPEAN MOVEMENT INTERNATIONAL

The European Movement is a network of organisations that has mobilised citizens and advocated for a democratic, federal and enlarged union since 1948.

© 2023 European Movement International. All rights reserved.
Site by La Verita Studios LTD
Back to top