What’s the project about?
Commons Network aims to establish a Pan-European network for knowledge exchange and strategy building on post-growth with Members of national Parliaments and Trade Union representatives. Apart from discussing strategies and policy proposals related to the Post-Growth agenda, we are fostering greater collaborations between MPs and trade unions as well as integrating efforts at national and European levels.
Our objectives are to establish a network of MPs dedicated to advancing the beyond growth agenda, facilitate their collaboration with trade unions, and propose concrete actions to push this agenda forward. There will be a close collaboration with civil society partners such as Oxfam Novib, the Green European Foundation and the Beyond Growth conference team.
Activities:
Commons Network has organised three roundtables to advance the Post-growth agenda. We also hosted panel discussions, bringing civil society into the debate, and coordinated the publication of a joint op-ed.
- The first roundtable in May 2023 used the momentum of the Beyond Growth Conference in the European Parliament to discuss post-growth policymaking at the level of EU Member States. We brought together nine national MPs and three trade union representatives; leading researcher Tim Jackson opened the discussion on national policies and strategies.
- The second rountable organized in December 2023 was centred on the topic of welfare beyond growth and eco-social policies. We brought together eleven national MPs and five trade union representatives, with specific interventions from Benjamin Denis (IndustriAll), from Aileen McLeod (WEAll), and from two MPs, Severine de Laveleye and Suzanne Kröger.
- Over the spring 2024, our network wrote a joint op-ed on postgrowth agriculture “Farmers VS Green Deal? Beyond growth is the answer”. It was co-signed by sixteen politicians, and the piece was published in national papers such as ElDiario (Spain) and Yorkshire Bylines (UK).
- In July 2024, we hosted an online panel discussion on “A just agricultural transition beyond growth” in collaboration with Oxfam Novib, Friends of the Earth Europe, Wellbeing Economy Alliance, and the European Environmental Bureau. The panel, moderated by our director Sophie Bloemen, featured politicians, farmers union representatives and members of civil society from all over Europe.
- The third roundtable in November 2024 took place at the Spanish Congress in Madrid, co-hosted by SUMAR. We discussed how to organize work in a democratic postgrowth economy, zooming in on policies such as work time reduction, the public job guarantee and universal basic income. We brought together MPs from Spain, France, Croatia and Slovenia. UN Special Rapporteur Olivier de Schutter presented his research on postgrowth, poverty and work, and Carlos Martin Urriza presented SUMAR’s policy of work time reduction.
- We co-hosted a panel discussion in Madrid with Spanish civil society, “Postgrowth pathways: Changing course amidst climate crisis”. Speakers were academics, activists, as well as politicians from Spain and abroad. We discussed what postgrowth could look like in practice as well as the socio-economic impact of the recent Spanish climate disaster, the DANA floods.
Project lead: Diane Golenvaux
Run time: May 2023 – Present
Other resources:
Our work on the Dutch national context: Interparliamentary workgroup for post-growth
The article series Responding to Degrowth Critics
Our publication living well on a finite planet: building a caring world beyond growth
Main take-aways from the second roundtable Building a Post-growth Pan-european network