Gregory's ServerThe EU #TaxTheRich petition has failed to gather 1 million signatures. Germany, France and Denmark were the only countries to cross the line. That tells you how many people can actually be mobilised for real change to our system. I am very disappointed. https://eci.ec.europa.eu/038/public/#/screen/home/disabled 1/3
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So. Let's all bookmark https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/_en (or in your preferred language) and keep an eye on new European Citizen Initiatives (and maybe start one!) because they can really help to put topics on the EU agenda. Deal? :) 3/3  @haayman But they do offer a monthly newsletter at https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/newsletter/subscribe_en @jwildeboer I tried to sign it two times, but the procedure was quite annoying. I don't even remember if I managed to validate it or not. I think it was a major problem and for sure some people (even motivated) just let it down at some point.  @antoinechev @jwildeboer hmm what was annoying there? And from which country are you? (It often totally depends.) AFAIK you just need to enter address details. You can try that with any other good #eci and as indicated by the OP it's always good to look and sign other good ECIs too. @jwildeboer Guilty :/ @jwildeboer I would've signed, but this is the first time I've heard about such petition. interesting how different the experiences are, I read about this initiative at least 10 different times in the fediverse  @jwildeboer @svenja I'm a bit surprised that there's visible East-West divide, except for Slovakia and Portugal.  @xgebi @jwildeboer @svenja Still hyped about not being behind the iron curtain and being able to actually own things. At the same time we have too little time as everyone is busy working, mowing their lawn and doing other american dream stuff. Hard work will surely make us millionaires. The soviet spirit of corruption and distrusting the government still runs strong. @jwildeboer I signed and promoted, and yes, I am disappointed too. If a low-effort aciton like this has so little success, a European general strike or something like that is a world away. @jwildeboer Paul Magnette is het president of the PS in Belgium. Most of their previous propositions to tax the rich in Belgium ended up with taxing the higher middle class. In a country with some of the highest taxes in the world, it will be hard to convince people to sign this proposal, specially when it's coming from a party that ruled Belgium for a long time and was never able to fix the issues here. @stroobl And yet Belgium ended at over 94%, so almost made it. An EU petition does not result in changes in national law, so reducing the EU initiative to one of the initiators being from Belgium and from a party you don't really like isn't helpful, IMHO. @jwildeboer The most people are constantly moaning about how bad everything is. But thatβs all they are doing. And thatβs the problem. That shows the politicians that they can do what ever they want.  @jwildeboer It's like the Scottish Referendum and the EU referendum here in the UK, a failure to make the positive case. People sit and think "surely this is obvious" and then it turns out it isn't obvious at all and there will be arguments and you just have to push your boat out at some point and explain in detail, and even more detail, in simple words WHY anything is a good idea and be prepared for arguments against.  @jwildeboer Think better, how do news propagate ? (ads, Social media, TV, newspaper) ... so who own them ? the billionaire ? Now you know why nobody knew about it ... and so signed it ... @girlintech And didn't we create federated networks to have an alternative way to spread information? ;) @jwildeboer i signed it and many people relayed it on their social where the most people are (x, Facebook etc) and people rarely share 2 time the same link on differents network. We moved here but 80% of the global user have not (and in this 20% a very VERY little part is european) and on this very little part, you take that 1/3 will actually sign it. So yeah that explain many thing @girlintech Compare it with the "Stop destroying videogames" petition. That already has reached quorum in 6 countries. I guess that egoistic goals will do better than solidarity :( https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en @jwildeboer yeah but i think that networking as you say is not the only problem. I our case, it's the network problem and you add to that the fact that the people behing it do not have advertised it properly, so the "advantage" of mastodon fell. For game the "stop killing game" movement have made a massive advertisement over all network (of course it relayed properly on masotodon (have seen it 4 or 5 times)). @jwildeboer @girlintech That "stop destroying video games" petition is spread far and wide, on youtube with very convincing videos for example. Probably also spread in discords and other casual / fun places and not really associated with the "annoying politics".   @jwildeboer I didn't even know EU has online petitions for various things up till recently when I learned about it here on Mastodon after someone posted about it. And I'm a younger generation. Given Europe has older population as whole, what did you really expect? Most older people don't use electronic methods for most things.  @jwildeboer I doubt it's so clear-cut: rather, I think it tells you how difficult it is to mobilise that many people. @jwildeboer Fortunately in Europe we have enough knowledgeable people in economics for them to know how bad for economy are all those taxes. Starting a business is almost impossible as it is and people recognize how bad it would be to scare investors even more. @jwildeboer it was lacking publicity IMHO. I signed it early on, spread links to friends and family and not once did I see anything in media or on social until you posted about it months after. I fear the participants do paint a correct picture of how many folks in Europe want change though. π |
And sure, there will be justifications on why this happened. That it was the wrong group of people leading the initiative. That it wasn't promoted the right way. It's always easy to criticise afterwards. But where were you when you could have added your knowledge and experience to make it work? Or at the very least inform your friends? I tried to promote and mobilise. Had the link pinned to my profile. 2/3