A Basic Income for Europe

About the event

“The Unconditional Basic Income is a periodic cash transfer granted to all members of a political community, without work requirement nor means-testing, and high enough to ensure an existence in dignity and participation in society”.

During this event, we’ll seek to analyse if a European UBI is possible. We’ll put the focus on what benefits it would bring compared to nationwide implementation and how institutions could finance it.

We will also review how the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) for a European Basic Income emerged and whether European society is actually ready for a basic income.

Context

Views on a guaranteed basic income vary drastically across Europe. In 2020 a Universal Basic Income ECI was launched to request the EU Commission to make a proposal for unconditional basic incomes throughout the EU to reduce regional disparities and to strengthen the economic, social and territorial cohesion in the EU.

This event is part of our knowledge community ‘A welfare state of the 21st century’. The Green European Foundation has been working on this issue for several years with the aim of opening a debate on UBI across Europe. We are now joining forces with other social actors to give this effort a broader scope.

As the debate continues, we too would be interested in expanding our analysis to include new information and additional countries.

Speakers

• Malcolm Torry. Dr. Malcolm Torry is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath and treasurer of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), and was until recently a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics and director of the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust. He has written a number of books about Basic Income, and for nearly twenty years has researched the financial feasibility of illustrative Basic Income schemes.

• Klaus Sambor. One of the main initiators of activities surrounding basic income in Austria and in Europe and one of the main organizers of the European Citizens’ Initiative “Start Unconditional Basic Incomes (UBI) throughout the EU”, which is taking place in all countries of the European Union.

Moderation:

Practicalities

Date and Time: October 5th (17:00-18:00)
Audience: The webinar is free and open to the general public.
Registration: Please register in advance via this link.

This event is organised by the Green European Foundation with the support of Transición Verde and with the financial support of the European Parliament to the Green European Foundation. The European Parliament is not responsible for the content of this event.