Has the COVID-19 pandemic increased support for Universal Basic Income? What social policies have governments implemented to cope with the economic effects of the pandemic? In this webinar, we’ll answer these questions while analysing GEF’s brochure on social policy responses to COVID-19.
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 put UBI on the spotlight as a driving solution to tackle poverty and income inequality and other problems in a changing world.
We will also review GEF brochure on social policy responses to COVID-19, which examines the social policy reactions to the Covid-19 crisis in a dozen different European countries.
Context
The COVID-19 crisis continues to change the way we live our lives, and how social services continue to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable. This crisis will affect how governments plan their future responses to social emergencies, and UBI could be one effective way to do it.
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
• Valerija Korošec, PhD in Postmodern Sociology. She is a representative of Slovenia in the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) and the European Network for the Fair Sharing of Working Time.
• Natalie Bennet, Green member of the House of Lords in the UK. Former leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2012 to 2016. She previously spent 20
years working as a journalist, (the Bangkok Post, The Times, and the Guardian Weekly)
• Simo Raittila, Coordinator of the Finnish think tank Visio and a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Helsinki. In 2018 he worked on last-resort social assistance register research at Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland.
Moderation:
Hannes Mehrer. Coordinator of the Basic income working Group of the German Green party and of the Green Network of UBI supporters.
Practicalities
Date and Time: October 19th (17:00-18:00)
Audience: The webinar is free and open to the general public.
Registration: Please register in advance via this link.
https://survey.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0vnlbynAXaKUtVQ
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.