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On a balcony near you: Decentralized declaration of the European Republic all over the EU

We all might remember it from our history lessons – a new Republic is sometimes announced from a balcony as in 1918: November 9th in Berlin, and November 12th in Vienna.

Some European intellectuals around Ulrike Guérot and Robert Menasse have taken those balcony events as a model to launch a European-wide campaign: the European Balcony Project. For the first time in European history, citizens all over the continent will gather at the same time, on Saturday November 10th at 16.00, with the goal of sparking a broad debate about European democracy and what it means to be European citizens.

From theatres, balconies and public spaces all over Europe, artists and citizens will proclaim a European Republic, discuss, and pave the way for the emancipatory claim of citizens’ equality beyond the nation-state.

 

 

In case you want to declare the European Republic from your own balcony (or a balcony where you will have access), please get in touch with the “European Democracy Lab” through their website, and find the text of the manifesto in 30 languages 

Frank Schwalba-Hoth

Founding member of the German Greens, first Green MEP. After leaving the EP, be was in charge of the EU Greenpeace office, worked for an EU Commission project in the former USSR and Mongolia. He is now living in Brussels as a political analyst and strategist, coach and networker. Among others, he is organising classical music house concerts as well as monthly networking dinners, Soirée Internationale, with 30-40 participants from different professional, cultural, national and social background.

Frank Schwalba-Hoth has 30 posts and counting. See all posts by Frank Schwalba-Hoth