17 April 2014
Participation is key, be the change!
Young people in Ireland and throughout Europe are using their voice and their power by actively engaging with politicians in the lead up to the European Parliament elections on the 23rd May. Collectively we are asking candidates running for election, to represent the voice of the people and make commitments to protect our interests at the EU level. Young FoE are excited to be involved in this Europe-wide Politics for People campaign run by ALTER-EU (the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation in the European Union). We are seizing this opportunity to place the Earth and the protection of her natural resources centre stage at the European Parliament.
The central theme of the campaign is the "stand-up pledge" in which each Member of the European Parliament (MEP) candidate will be asked to pledge the following:
"I will stand-up [defend] for citizens and democracy against excessive lobbying influence of banks and big business"
This is to address the fact that too many European citizens feel alienated from the decisions made in Brussels. Big corporations, lobby consultancies and law firms spend hundreds of millions of euros every year to ensure that EU policy-making meets the needs of big business and not the public interest,at the expense of the environment and our health. Profits are continuously put before people. This campaign aims to help change this situation by getting a large number of elected MEPs tocommit to work towards robust rules for lobby transparency and to limit undue influence by lobbyists.
How do Young Friends of the Earth fit in as part of the Europe-wide campaign?
Young Friends of the Earth are running a national Politics for People campaign. Our campaign launched today April 15th goes beyond the online “stand-up pledge” and directly asks our political representatives to address our environmental concerns.Together with University students and societies weare engaging with all 28 candidates personally. We want to let them know that young people are deeplyconcerned about environmental issues. We are doing this by asking them their views and their commitments on a number of important current environmental issues. These include: The emissions commitment; thepossibility for the renewable energy feed-in tariff being phased out;Concerns around the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP); Biofuels;Slackening of EU fracking regulations;Genetically Modified foods; Biodiversity.
Our campaign will culminate in 3 discussion panels, one in a college from eachof the electoral regions: (Dublin City University, NUI Maynooth and University College Cork). The panel will include at least one MEP candidate, one student, and one representative from the environmental sector. This discussion will be held in the coming weeks prior to the election. More information on dates to follow shortly.
We have prepared toolkits for students and societies in each of the electoral regions, to assist them in making contact with their representatives. These toolkits can be found in the resource section on our website.You don’t have to be a student though to make use of the great information in these toolkits and to contact your regional candidate yourself about these issues.
In the discussions, we want to get back to basics, and talk about what the environment means to all of us. • How can we learn from our past mistakes and collectively commit to a more sustainable way of living? • How can our social, economic and cultural structures support our transition to this way of living? • How can governments, those in positions of leadership, and the Media ensure transparent dissemination of the Truth?
Let’s get the answers we deserve from our national representatives and show them that young people today deeply care about the environment and want to protect communities from corporate interests! Thanks for joining our voice and tackling the issues that really matter.
If you want to get more involved please email or facebook us.
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