Name: Maarten de Groot

Email: maartendegroot9@gmail.com

Proposal Title: DiEM25 Members’ Initiative (DMI)

Supporters: NC UK

Area: Running an Effective Movement (strengthening our OPs and Manifesto, improving internal
processes; fundraising; IT)

Summary:

If DiEM25 is to develop the political leverage it needs to democratize the European Union, we need
to build up a movement that is much more numerous, more active and more resilient than it is
today. More concretely, we need a movement in which its members feel empowered to jointly
shape the future direction of the movement. In order to achieve this, our proposal is to give
members the right to initiate all-member votes (bottom-up), in addition to the Coordinating
Collective’s currently existing right to initiate such votes (top-down).

As the current dynamic in the run-up to the Prague Assembly shows, DiEM25 members have a lot of
passion and ideas for our movement. However, currently, we do not have a mechanism that enables
the movement to tap into our members’ collective intelligence and self-organising capacity. This
leads to a situation whereby many active members feel frequently unheard and ignored, whereas
the Coordinating Collective is overworked.

In order to address this problem, we propose to follow the example of Demokratie in Bewegung and
to introduce a DiEM25 Members’ Initiative (DMI), giving members the right to initiate all-member
votes.

In a nutshell, the DiEM25 Members’ Initiative (DMI) could work as follows: if a member has a
proposal that would require a decision by the whole membership, (s)he starts to discuss it on the
Forum, collects the support of at least 3 DSCs and then submits her DMI proposal via an online form.
Upon registration, the member has 6 months to collect the support of at least 1% of the DiEM25
electorate (which currently corresponds with app. 75 members) in order to be successful in
enforcing an all-member vote. Before the all-member vote takes place, there are 3 more weeks of
online discussion and 2 more weeks to integrate feedback.

How will this proposal help DiEM25 achieve its goals?

All key decisions related to our movement are decided by means of online all-member votes. While
every verified and minimally active member of DiEM25 has the right to vote, and while every
member can request the Coordinating Collective to initiate such votes, at present only the
Coordinating Collective has the right to decide which issues are put to a vote, and how to frame the
question and options.

By giving members the right to initiate all-member votes, we enable ordinary members to take more
ownership of, and responsibility for the future of our movement: members would be encouraged to
work together with like-minded members, to engage in a constructive exchange, to build consensus
around a concrete proposal and to convince other members to support their proposal.
This strengthens not only the horizontal member-to-member ties within our movement, but also
members’ ownership of the movement as a whole. Additionally, by increasing the amount of
members who feel ownership of the movement, we make our movement more dynamic and more
appealing for (potential) new members.

This increases our collective capacity to be a leading force in the democratization of the European
Union. Let’s be the change we want to see!

How will your proposal be implemented (timeline and steps)?

The DMI procedure:

Step 1: start a discussion thread in the Forum in order to collect feedback on your idea.

Step 2: collect the support of at least 3 DSCs from 3 countries and submit your initiative online.

Step 3: a moderation team checks whether your initiative is in line with DiEM25’s values, and then
registers it on a dedicated internal webpage.

Step 4: find support for your initiative from at least 1% of the DiEM25 electorate within 6 months. If
another proposal on the same topic is submitted, the moderation team registers it as a “variant-
initiative”. The variant-initiative can gather support up until 10 days after the original initiative has
reached the quorum. The CC has the option to present a variant-initiative as well.

Step 5: if an initiative has reached the quorum, it will be subjected to 3 weeks of online discussion.

Step 6: you have 2 more weeks to revise your initiative’s text.

Step 7: All initiatives (original and possible variants) that have reached the quorum are subjected to
a single all-member vote, using the Schultze method in case there are variant-initiatives.

The VC has the power to overrule the moderation team in case of controversy.

You will know your proposal has succeeded when:

The introduction of the DMI has led to:

- the empowerment of members to organise themselves, to work out their ideas into concrete
proposals, and to work across DSCs and national borders;

- increased trust, mutual understanding and open dialogue between individual members and the
Coordinating Collective;

- a movement in which various competing views on the future of the movement are openly
discussed and democratically resolved.

- a movement that is more dynamic and more resilient, able to stand united and in solidarity with
progressive and democratic forces vis-a-vis the many challenges facing Europe and the world.

If your proposal is selected for the Assembly, who among the authors will represent it?

Maarten de Groot