The European Parliament (EP) elections will take place in May 2019. The political parties of the EP are starting their election’s campaign, and our time to organise ourselves has come as well. As antiracist, antifascist, antinationalist and pro-European NGOs, we need to act against far-right extremism and populism in our respective countries to stop the further spread of dividing and hateful narratives against minorities and vulnerable groups.
Next years’ European Elections can decide on the future of the European Union: nationalism and anti-EU-sentiment is gaining traction in a lot of countries of the EU and the idea of a unified and solidary Europe can be shut down. European values of tolerance, inclusivity and freedom of speech are threatened by right-wing governments and parties across the continent. “The EU is one of the greatest accomplishments the European governments created in the last century. UNITED wants the European Union to be open and inclusive for every human coming from an EU-country or a third-country. However, nationalist movements in Europe push the EU to become an even more exclusive and nationalist Fortress Europe, in which the colour of your skin, sexual identity and religion defines whether someone is accepted here,” says Balint Josa, Programme Coordinator of UNITED. “In order to stop these racist and nationalist narratives, we urge you to take action again against hatred, fascism and nationalism at the EP elections.”
UNITED organised a campaign for the EP elections in 2014, and we are again planning to run an awareness-raising campaign in 2019 to motivate people to take part in the elections. Furthermore, we aim at monitoring the political parties that MEP candidates represent in order to prevent that populist and far-right parties are elected to the EP.
For this we need your help! We count on your expertise regarding the (far) right-wing parties of your respective countries. If you could provide information about your local political parties, it would be great help for our campaign. We have created a form for you to fill out, which you can find here.
We would be also very glad if you shared your ideas on how to shape the campaign, and if you are already planning to do activities for the EP elections, please inform us via e-mail at epelections@unitedagainstracism.org.
Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0
