Dear Volters!

We hope that this newsletter finds you well.

Welcome back!

The Board of Volt Belgium wishes you and your loved ones a happy New Year 2023! We are very excited to start this new year with you and thank you for your continued support during the last year. 💜 We also hope that you are proud of what we achieved together so far.

What’s expected in 2023

Before the winter break, our Policy team and volunteers worked hard to organise a ‘preferendum’ vote on what we all consider to be the electoral priorities for the 2024 Regional and Federal elections. You can find the full list of results by clicking on the image below or by reading this post shared by our Policy Co-lead Bram Vandeninden (please use your Volt E-mail account to access).

The results were presented on 17th of December in Leuven.

It’s now high time to start writing the electoral programme ✍️ and present it at our next General Assembly on April 22nd! The policy team is looking for volunteers to join the core writing teams responsible for drafting the electoral policies. If you are interested, please complete this Google form. We would like to particularly encourage our female volunteers to participate. It really matters to have your perspective too! This year will also be a defining year in which we will flesh out our strategy for the 2024 elections and select our candidates who will represent Volt in the next elections in Belgium. But to get there, we need you. We therefore encourage you to start thinking about whether you would like to stand as a candidate for the local and/or regional/ federal/ European elections. If you want to contribute to the electoral strategy, then join the Election Taskforce team, either as a co-lead (see Announcements) or volunteer.

Volt Election Watch

• 05/02 Presidential elections in Cyprus 🇨🇾 Constantinos Christofides is standing as a presidential candidate for the alliance Volt-Neo Kyma. His manifesto can be found here (in Greek).
• 12/02 Repeated local elections in Berlin 🇩🇪 After the decision of the Constitutional Court of Berlin to repeat the elections of September 2021, in which Volt casted above 1%, enough to secure state funding, the city team is giving again it’s 200% to bring new politics to the German capital. Follow their campaign here (in German).
• 15/03 Provincial elections in The Netherlands 🇳🇱 For the first time, Volt NL is participating in the ‘Provinciale Statenverkiezingen’. Read more about it here (in Dutch).

Eerste Kamer (Senate) Elections for Dutch citizens living abroad

📣 Are you Dutch and living abroad? Then register to vote for the Eerste Kamer (Senate)! For the first time ever, you can vote for the Dutch Senate even if you live outside of the Netherlands. The elections will take place on 15 March 2023, but to participate, register before 31 January 2023 to be able to vote. The Eerste Kamer (Senate) decides on a lot of topics you encounter as well, even if you live abroad. Don’t miss the opportunity to let your voice be heard!

Check our Volt Europa Co-President Reinier’s video message just for you:

More information on: https://internationaal.voltnederland.org/

Announcements

• Help us fill essential functions! We are looking for highly motivated volunteers to become our next Secretary of the Board (F/M/D) and Secretary General (F/D). For questions and applications (CV + motivation letter), please send an email to secgen@voltbelgium.org.
• Applications for the Election Taskforce are open. We are looking for 3 motivated volunteers to apply for the role of Co-lead. Are you keen to shape the strategy of Volt Belgium together with our functional teams, the local teams and the Board? Then apply before the 22nd of January by sending your CV and a motivation letter to secgen@voltbelgium.org. All information here.
• Want to help just for an hour or two a week? Then volunteer for the Community Team to help with onboarding new members 💜 . Please reach out to us by sending an e-mail to community@voltbelgium.org. We are also looking for translation heroes (English-Dutch, English-French, English-German)! For more info, please reach out to communications@voltbelgium.org.
• For all our other vacancies, kindly check out our website.

Save the Dates! 🗓

• 22 April: Volt Belgium General Assembly in Wallonia. Exact location will be announced soon. What you can expect: presentation and vote on our Electoral Programme, Provincial Committee elections, Election Plan, 1-year recap of the Board and more!
• 3rd & 4th of June: Volt Europa General Assembly in Bucharest, Romania 🇷🇴 . More information and tickets will be available soon. 

IMPORTANT: In order to vote at either General Assemblies, you must be a member of Volt Belgium (by 22nd of March) and Volt Europa (by 3rd of May) respectively. Not a member yet? Sign up today here.

Up-to-date with Damian

Want to stay in touch with our team in the European Parliament? Then subscribe to our MEP Damian Boeselager’s newsletter to get all the latest news straight into your inbox and don’t miss out on anything happening in the EP 🇪🇺. To subscribe, click here.

You can also read up on Damian’s accountability report about what he and his team have achieved in 3,5 years of mandate (to read, please log in with you Volt E-mail address).

🚨Internship alert🚨 The EP team is looking for highly motivated candidates to support Damian’s political communication and policy work in the fields of EU Reform, Digitalization, Migration and European Democracy! All information here.

Get in touch with us

If you have any questions, or if you want to get in touch with the Board, please send an email to board@voltbelgium.org.

Do not answer directly to this newsletter, as we do not receive the responses.

Thank you for reading!

Johanna Dirlewanger-Lücke and Carlo Giovanni Giudice,
For the Board of Volt Belgium