FEPS Weekly Newsletter 21 Oct 2022

Last week, one part of FEPS’ team took part in the Progressive Governance Summit 2022 in Berlin, Europe’s largest conference for progressive politics gathering leading politicians, thinkers and strategists from both sides of the Atlantic.

📺 Videos of the live-streamed sessions can be found on this link. More will follow soon.

🧵You can also check the social media dialogue around the #PGS22 and FEPS’ Twitter threads about the following sessions:

• Panel Solidarity in Times of Crises: Alliances for a Social Europe, with the participation of FEPS Secretary General László Andor: “We must reinforce the social safety net. We need to be ready to support each other not only when the house is burning, it is not enough to discuss these topics when we are in trouble”.

• Panel Places that Matter: Empowering Regions in the Global Economy, chaired by FEPS President Maria Joâo Rodrigues. “People in some regions feel disempowered and have lots of resentment. During Covid, we prevented the worst, but with the war, energy crisis and inflation, we’re going further in the marginalization of groups in our society. How shall we deal with it?”, this is the question the FEPS President asked speakers, including Anneliese Dodds, Chair of the UK Labour Party. Watch the video.

• Panel The Future of Coalition Politics, chaired by FEPS Director for Research and Training, Ania Skrzypek: “We started from the mechanics of building coalitions, but we discussed much more, such as the need for integrity and how to build bridges, ending up agreeing on the fact that politics needs a lot of passion!” Watch the video.

📸 Pictures of these panels and more can be found on this link!

PAST EVENT
PES Congress 2022
Last week, we also travelled to Berlin to participate in the PES Congress.

🧵You can check the social media dialogue around the #PESCongress, FEPS’ Twitter threads about the following sessions and the available videos:

• FEPS fringe event on enlargement, ‘The future of the European project: enlargement VS deepening?’, chaired by FEPS President Maria Joâo Rodrigues, with the participation of Radmila Šekerinska, Andreas Schieder, Domènec Rui Devesa, Stefan Collignon, Mercedes Bresso and Jo Leinen.

• S&D fringe event ‘Progressives policies to end the energy crisis‘, with the participation of FEPS Secretary General, László Andor.
• PES Women Annual Conference, ‘#MakeHerCount in times of crisis – progressive answers to gender blindness’, with the participation of FEPS Policy Analyst on Gender Equality, Laeticia Thissen. Watch the video.
• PES Congress twitter thread. Videos: Day 1 | Day 2
• PES Congress panel ‘Our Europe: respect for the people’, with the participation of FEPS President. Watch the video.

📸 Pictures of these events and more can be found on this link!

Congress resolution here.

3 – 4 November – Vilnius, Lithuania

The aim of the “Tackling the Rise of Living Costs” conference in Vilnius is to gather key experts and stakeholders to discuss what needs to be done to alleviate the societal burden of the extraordinary rise of living costs. In doing so, the meeting will provide valuable inputs to the progressive forces in the Baltics for further concerted action. The geographic location of the meeting is significant.

In Lithuania and the Baltic region more generally, the inflation shock is one of the highest within the European Union. However, this crisis comes with a disruptive potential for the European political and economic status quo. In other words, we face a real possibility of great transformation of our political and economic regime. What is at stake, therefore, is whether we will be able to both uphold and further enhance our core democratic ideals.