Dear friends,

I will sum up the campaigning activities that are taking place in UEF this spring. Especially for those of you that were not present at the FC I encourage to take a look at UEF elections campaign posters and learn more about what is taking place! I would also like to invite all of you to share your campaigning activities both on this list as well as on our web by sending info and pictures to the office!?

UEF posters available

A new UEF poster is available! We have produces a multipurpose poster where everyone can put in their own message in their own language - the topics can range from the need of a stronger EU, a federal EU, Lisbon treaty, EU to act against global warming and much more.

Please find below a small brainstorming on slogans as well as the poster: POSTER, please click here SLOGANS, please click here

For those of you that did not pick up copies of the poster at the FC but would still like some just let us know your address (e-mail to secretariat(at)federaleurope.org) and we can send you some (color, A3) Online campaigning presentation

At the FC we had a working group on campaigning where Jon Worth, former president of JEF and professional online campaigner, gave a great presentation on how to use Facebook and other social networks in campaigning. For those of you that missed the presentation you can find it at

http://www.jonworth.eu/downloads/facebook-politics.ppt

In case you like to join the mailing list of the Working group feel free to contact me, as I am co-chairing the WG together with Francesco Ferrero.

Who is Your Candidate?

A very successful campaign is coming towards the end. In addition to the webpage and the Facebook group where signatures have been collected, we have now had federalist actions at the PES Congress, PES Campaign Lunch press conference, the Green Congress as well as the liberal Campaign launch. Every delegate has been given our Agenda Change flyer urging them to nominate their candidate.

PES President Rasmussen was also asked at the campaign launch press conference for their candidate (replying they have not decided AGAINST nominating one) and Verhofstadt replied to the federalists at the liberal campaign launch that this was a very important issue to discuss in the Liberal Group.

It looks like EPP have de facto nominated Barroso, who is running a successful campaign on EU money. The PES said they will not claim the president event if they win the elections.

Even if we didn’t get a contra candidate we have managed to raise a huge awareness of the demand inside the parties as well as in the media. The federalist have managed to push the issue for intense discussion at top level as well as spread awareness to the lower level of the parties where the knowledge of the possibility to nominate a party candidate was almost absent.

The ground is now prepared for the next elections where the federalists will stand at the forefront again!

Federalist Blog

http://federalists.cafebabel.com/ As you would recently read on this list the Federalist has had a great success in reaching new circles of readers trough the cafebabel.com Federalist Blog -until now we have had over 2500 readers and we are among the top 10 from of the eudebate2009.eu platform! Moreover the blog has been added by the PES Press Team to their regularly send out so called Blog Watch and attracted a lot of attention.

Please keep on spreading the link to your networks and feel free to take part with articles and comments!

Federalist Online Taskforce

With 35 online activists from UEF and JEF, as well as 4 national FOT groups, we are starting to get our presence online improved slowly!

Every 2 weeks there is a call for action, including bullet points of argumentation on the topic. After this it is up to each activist to find forums, newspapers, blogs in his/her home country to write articles, comments or letters to the editor.
We have until now produced over 20 articles and 20 article comments across Europe.

If you want to join contact me at asa.gunven(at)federalists.eu! You can find a collection of European blog/media RSS feeds under www.netvibes.com/federalists Use it to keep track on European news and to find articles to comment!

Federalist Intervention Taskforce

With 35 FIT activists in Brussels following the UEF coordinated events agenda, we have until now attended over 2 events per week with federalist questions and intervention.

Besides the thousands of people reached in the audiences we have also manage to involve many decision-makers, such as Commissioner Margot Wallstroem, Belgium PM Van Rompuy, PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen and President of PES Women Zita Gurmai as well as Guy Verhofstadt, former Prime Minister of Belgium.

Maybe this efficient campaigning method, that only demands a couple of hours work for each person, is something to try out in your section?

I hope that this was an interesting update on the Federalist EP elections campaign 2009. If you have any further question please don’t hesitate to contact me (asa.gunven(at)federalists.eu) or the UEF secretariat (secretariat(at)federaleurope.org). Federalist greetings,

Asa Gunven