P4: Campaign Plan 2023-2024

Background Information

Political Background

The last few years have seen crucial changes in defining European cooperation.
From the pandemic to the cost of living crisis and up to the dreadful invasion
of Ukraine by Russia, Europe is facing several major political challenges. While
warm winters keep breaking temperature records year after year, and deadly heat
waves are sweeping over Europe setting millions under threats, we are still to
determine the future of the planet and the future of the young people.

Through our shared struggles and aspirations, we see that not a single one of
our political issues is a lone priority. We refuse to choose between the
survival and well-being of the planet, our personal liberties and freedoms, and
social welfare. To be Green means to fight for all these demands simultaneously.

Towards the European elections we strive to achieve our goal of a feminist,
diverse, democratic, sustainable, and social Europe. This means maintaining our
leadership on climate and environment, mainstreaming social justice into all
aspects of our politics and campaigns and strengthening our role as defenders of
democracy and freedoms. We need to give our voice for the voiceless, and keep
bringing up political topics others are too scared to talk about.

The European Parliament elections of 2024 are all about daring, uniting, and
fighting for social justice on all levels. FYEG advocates for systemic changes
that cannot be achieved through a catalogue of single-issue political measures.
They require the dismantling of various systems of oppression and the
transformation of society as a whole. To achieve this, we strive to gather young
people on grassroots level running campaigns together, supporting local
struggles, and empowering them to take action.

Based on the European Parliament Youth Survey (2021) the political issues that
young people would most like to see prioritised are tackling poverty and social
inequality (43%); followed by combating climate change and protecting the
environment (39%); and combating unemployment or a lack of jobs (37%). More than
a third would also like to see priority given to improving population health and
wellbeing, and more than a quarter to improving access to education and training
(28%) and tackling corruption (27%).

In terms of socio-demographic differences: tackling poverty and inequality, and
combating climate change and protecting the environment is more commonly
mentioned by females than by males. Combating climate change and protecting the
environment was more popular among the age groups of 16-19, while issues such as
combating unemployment and improving population health and wellbeing were more
popular among the older age groups.

Based on the data on voting behaviour at different ages in the European Union in
the 2019 elections, Greens are the biggest party among 18-26 year olds polling
up to 20% of the votes in the age group. At the same time, a 5 % drop happened
in the age group of 26-35 year olds.

Besides activating the age group of 26-35, we have to take into consideration
the voting percentage of young people. The turnout increase, that took part in
the elections of 2019, was mostly powered by the younger generation across the
EU. Specifically young citizens under 25 years (+14 percentage increase in
voting), as well as the 25-39 year-olds (+12 percentage increase). Reasons
behind the increased voting in the 2019 European elections were motivated by an
increase in sense of civic responsibility, a rising sentiment that voting can
make things change, as well as voters’ strengthened support for the EU.
(European Parliament 2019.) Almost half of the young people (46%) have voted in
the last local, national or European election (European Parliament 2021).
Increasing the amount of young voters even further would be the best way for the
Greens to gain more votes. This we can achieve by bringing more topics that
interest young people into debate.

The most commonly identified barriers to voting in elections are: lack of
interest, a belief that politicians are not listening to people and a lack of
understanding of the issues (European Parliament 2021). With our campaign, we
have to aim to build up the trust of young voters, speak in a language that they
can understand and communicate about topics that interest them.

Campaign background

FYEG has been growing steadily in terms of organisational capacity and political
impact since 2014 and the Green Wave of the EU elections in 2019 has rapidly
amplified the process. In 2020, the FYEG Executive Committee started a process
for organisational change aiming to ensure that FYEG will continue to develop
and grow in a coherent and sustainable way in order to be able to continuously
work for a stronger young green European movement.
Currently, FYEG is at its biggest and strongest in terms of financial and
organisational capacity. Moreover FYEG Alumni are represented in the European
Parliament, National Parliaments and also in the Boards of Partner
organisations.

Looking back to 2019, with the urgency of the climate crisis being brought to
the forefront of the political agenda, the European elections campaign was a
success. The Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament increased from 52 to 71
MEPs, providing the Green European family with new opportunities for organising
and pushing for change. FYEG’s campaign contributed positively in bringing about
the Green Wave. We were able to establish a common ground for campaigning,
providing a good basis for potential future campaigns around transnational
lists.

We are building this 2024 elections campaign based on the learnings of the 2019
elections campaigns.

This Campaign Plan should be read together with the FYEG 2022-2025 Strategy and
2023 and 2024 Activity Plans.

Goals of the campaign

The goal of FYEG’s election campaign is to spread our vision “a just, feminist,
diverse, democratic, sustainable Europe where people are happy and free”;
mobilise, empower and engage young people across Europe around our hopeful
message and our belief in Green Europe, and to increase the visibility and name
recognition of Young Greens.

Focus of the campaign

Our 2024 Campaign will focus on:

Focus 1: Spreading the Young Green vision

FYEG fights for equality, inclusion, personal liberties and freedoms, social
welfare and survival and well-being of our planet. As written in FYEG’s
political platform, FYEG does not see a single one of these political issues as
a lone priority but instead fights for all of them simultaneously.

1. Campaign Narratives

As part of the 2024 Elections Campaign, we need to bring forward a simple,
concrete, authentic, hopeful and collective story. Based on the learnings from
the 2019 elections campaign and considering that FYEG has completely renewed its
political platform in 2021, we have decided not to write an election manifesto.
Instead, we will solidify our political platform into maximum four main
priorities, messages, narratives, and stories that we can repeat throughout the
campaign. These will be solidified with concrete policy recommendations.

FYEG has decided on the priorities based on the existing research and polls that
map out the concerns of young Europeans; the profiling of the European Greens
and the Greens Group in the European Parliament; the membership surveys executed
in 2018 and 2020. The FYEG Executive Committee identified four core issues that
Young Greens have a strong political position, that appeals to Young Europeans
and will complement the work of the European Green Party.

Our messaging will be comprehensive enough to bring forward our vision in its
entirety but flexible enough to adapt to the current news cycle so that it
doesn’t appear tone deaf. Our slogans will be defined early enough to allow
repetition and outreach but not too early to be outdated with the current pace
of events.

Separately to our political priorities we will endeavour to promote ‘Get Out The
Vote’ messaging with partner international organisations. This is a powerful way
to increase voter turnout, promote democracy and develop our relationships with
these international organisations.

In order to allow flexibility, FYEG is planning a three fold approach to its
campaign narrative:

1. Finalise the campaign slogan and narratives (July - October 2023)

2. Publish the campaign slogan, campaign visuals, narratives and messages
   (February 2024)

3. Publish the campaign stories and policy proposals (February 2024)

2. Campaign Brand Identity

FYEG recently updated its branding, adopting a fresher look. For the 2024
election campaign we will develop a separate campaign brand identity that
complements our campaign narratives. For the 2024 election campaign, we plan to
execute a tender to solicit visionary, modern and exciting proposals.

FYEG will distribute the merchandise to the volunteers and will also use it to
fundraise for the campaign.

3. Communication Tools

Our communications related to the campaign will be focused through 4 main areas:

1. Social Media - The FYEG social media strategy will be adapted to focus
   resources on promoting the campaign messages, promoting our candidates and
   recruiting volunteers.

2. Email - Actionnetwork.org is an online platform that enables us to connect
   with our activists and mobilise them for our campaign. This powerful tool
   helps us build stronger relationships with our supporters and effectively
   engage them in our mission by targeting with greater precision.

3. Internal channels - We will continue to use Telegram to communicate with
   those already engaged with FYEG and we will explore alternate channels for
   communicating with our community of volunteers.

4. Press - The role of traditional press will be secondary. Media will be
   invited to key events during the campaign and press releases issued.

4. Setting the Agenda

1. European Green Party

   
   Manifesto

The European Green Party is going to have a Manifesto for the Elections. FYEG
will be part of the Manifesto Working Group and will be represented by a co-
spokesperson to make sure that FYEG priorities are reflected in the manifesto.
FYEG will not write its own manifesto but will make use of the EGP Manifesto
during the campaign, as much as possible.

Campaign Working Group

The European Green Party is going to have a Campaign Working Group. FYEG will be
part of the Campaign Working Group and be represented by a member of the
Secretariat and an EC member, working on the campaign on FYEG side to liaise
with the group on practicalities and priorities.

2. Greens-EFA

The Green-EFA is going to establish an Information Campaign Taskforce at staff
level. FYEG will be part of the Taskforce and be represented by a member of the
Secretariat. Where possible, FYEG should also join the trainings/away days of
the communications and outreach teams.

3. Youth Forum

FYEG has already provided input on the Youth Forum Manifesto for the elections.
FYEG will be part of the advocacy discussion with the political groups and will
be represented by its EC members.

Focus 2: Active and Involved Member Organisation

In line with the 2022-2025 Strategy, FYEG’s first strategic focus is
strengthening its network and membership coordination. A strong and well
coordinated federation would mean a strong and well coordinated election
campaign where member organisations are actively engaged with FYEG’s election
campaign.

A successful EU election campaign relies on active and involved member
organisations. In order to facilitate their involvement in the elections
campaign FYEG will continue its grants program and will enable macro and micro
grants for FYEG Member Organisations to organise local, regional or national
election campaigns, specifically with a focus on increasing the young voter
turnout.

Focus 3: Building Green Community

In the years of 2023 and 2024 FYEG’s educational activities will focus on EU24
elections. The 2-year-long project we designed is aimed towards building a
community of young Greens that will help us mobilise for the European elections
offline and online.

The Green community building will happen as follows:

Recruitment

First, we will recruit Young Greens interested in volunteering for the elections
campaign throughout FYEG’s educational activities in 2023. This work has already
started with the Youth Assembly, and will continue with the Summer Camp in
Sweden in July.

Engagement

We will then engage all the volunteers we’ve recruited using online resources,
allocated human resources, and a dedicated online platform where volunteers can
start to organise, all of this in parallel to the “Influencelection Games”.

Community-building and fun

The next step will be to ensure they have fun, so that they stay involved and we
can organise them. To do this we will keep them motivated, continue facilitating
a digital space where they can connect and most importantly ask them to meet us
for the most exciting campaign event, the Green Rave in February 2024.

Mobilisation

Finally, we will empower them to become volunteer leaders. As volunteer leaders,
we will ask them to convince more people to join the campaign, to organise small
actions as stops of the European Train Tour, to engage potential voters online,
to translate messages and slogans, to send out press releases, and so much more.
Their involvement will culminate in the GOTV campaign ran in the last week
before the vote.

Focus 4: Young Candidates Platform

In the European Elections 2019 campaign, FYEG created a Young Candidates
Platform (YCP). It started as a means to get young greens on the European lists
for green parties and then became a support network for selected candidates to
share their experiences and reach out for help. The YCP was a huge success: 7
members of the candidate platform were elected as MEPs!

FYEG will continue with its Young Candidates Platform for the 2024 Elections,
with the aim to create a support network for young greens who are putting
themselves forward for the EU elections, to build capacity of the candidates and
also to visualise and “put faces to” the Young Green campaign.

The Young Candidate Platform’s work will follow four streams of action:

1. Getting Young Greens on the lists of Green parties and in electable
   positions

Wherever possible, the Platform will provide mentorship to young people to
support them in their negotiations with mother parties not only to be put on the
lists as candidates, but to be placed in electable positions.

2. Training and equipping the Young Candidates

The Platform is a space where candidates can build their skills and are given
concrete tools to run their campaigns. This varies from public speaking and
debating workshops to access to a CRM to run a strong digital organising
campaign, from tips on how to handle online hate speech to an efficient
engagement ladder for volunteers and supporters.

Trainings will be held online, with the exception of one in-person two-day
meeting organised November 2023.

3. Campaigning for the Young Candidates

The Platform will also concretely support Young Candidates giving them
visibility to, promoting their profiles, getting them speaking time at debates,
and organising actions in their countries. The mobilisation of volunteers will
be crucial to achieve this, which is why this work will go hand-in-hand with
milestones and events of the Green Community.

4. Management of the YCP community

The Platform will finally be a space where Young Candidates can return to
whenever they are struggling with their campaign or when they need to seek peer
advice from other Young Candidates. A safe space and support network. As such,
the Young Candidates will meet regularly online to keep in the loop with each
others’ campaigns and do this journey together.

With the Platform FYEG will strive to address the lack of diversity in politics
and people who hold elected positions: not just getting young people in offices
but to be an accessible resource for women, racialized people, people with
disabilities, LGBTQIA+ people, socio-economically marginalised people and anyone
with an otherwise disadvantaged background. These profiles will also be
prioritised in the selection of candidates to join the Young Candidate Platform.

Human Resources

FYEG will allocate the following human resources to ensure that the campaign
objectives are met:

FYEG Central Campaign Team:
The FYEG Campaign Team will be composed of:

On top of this, each Focus will have the following team working on it:

Focus 1: Spreading the Young Green vision:

Focus 2: Active and Involved Member Organisations:

Focus 3: Building Green Community

Focus 4: Young Candidates Platform

Budget

We have allocated €20,000 (€14,000 in 2023 and €6,000 in 2024) in funds to be
spent on four areas.