Franck
Biancheri, aged 42, has been
acting in favour of democratizing
the European construction for
17 years already.
As
soon as 1985, while
he is still a student, he founds
the first large-scale European
student network, AEGEE-EUROPE,
which only 3 years later in
1988, will gather over 12,000
members scattered in 70 different
European academic cities. In
1987, at the end of a round
of meetings with the political
leaders of the European Community,
Franck Biancheri manages to
convince French President, François
Mitterrand, to engage publicly
in favour of the adoption of
the financing of the ERASMUS
programme, thus enabling
the birth of the first large
European and citizen-based programme
oriented towards the younger
generations.
In
1989, Franck Biancheri,
with his European friends, undertakes
to give evidence that it is
possible to build a trans-European
political mouvement, Initiative
for a European Democracy (IDE),
and presents lists in different
countries (France, Spain and
The Netherlands) in the European
election of 1989. Until today,
he remains the only one who
managed to achieve such an exploit.
From
1991 onward, Franck
Biancheri, through various non-governmental
organizations, is busy developing
the relations between
the EU and the various regions
and continents of the world
(Eastern Europe, Arab world,
Latin America, Asia and North
America). This activity brings
him to organize with his friends
one of the most important EuroMed
civil society congress of the
Barcelona Process in 1996 in
Marrakech (Morocco); as well
as to launch TIESWEB, the first
Transatlantic web-portal dedicated
to dialogue between European
and American civil societies,
in December 1997, at the White
House, during the Washington
Euro-American Summit.
In parallel, Franck Biancheri
is asked for advice as
expert by various EU
(European Court of Auditors,
European Commission) and
national institutions
(namely the French, Dutch, German…
governments). Between 1993 and
1998, he strives to blow
the whistle towards the institutions
on the growing problems encountered
in the management of European
public funds, as well as on
the widening gap between EU
institutions and citizens.
In
1998, Franck Biancheri,
in his anticipation scenario
" EU
2009: When the grand-children
of Franco, Hitler, Mussolini
and Pétain will take
control of Europe ",
had tried to warn the institutions
on the increasing risk of political
divorce between the European
project and democracy if the
citizens were not fully integrated
to the European decision-making
process.
From
1999 until 2002,
Franck Biancheri, as Director
of Studies and Strategy in the
Europe
2020 Foundation,
animates two series of top-level
seminars on the future of the
EU by 2020 and on enlargement,
in partnership with a large
number of European governments
and EU institutions; these seminars
contributed significantly
to increase the awareness of
the deeply-rooted situation
of crisis reached by the project
of European construction and
its institutions.
In
October 2000, in
order to bench-mark the emergence
of new generations of Europeans
-born after the Treaty of Rome-
and to contribute to the invention
of tomorrow's Europe, Franck
Biancheri organizes in Paris
the congress "
Newropeans 2000 - New Europe,
New Challenges, New Generations
"; a major event
which gathered some 2,000
young Europeans together
with a large number of heads
of States and Governments, Ministers
and European Commissioners.
This congress namely gave birth
to the most important world
project of e-democracy,
Eu-StudentVote,
which, under the impulse of
Franck Biancheri, made possible
the election via Internet of
the first EU Student Council
in June 2002.
By
dedicating a whole year (2002-2003)
to this series of 100 citizen-conferences
in 25 different European countries
(Newropeans Democracy
Marathon), Franck Biancheri
expresses his deep belief
that the European construction
has now reached a crucial stage
of its history and that the
main challenge of this decade
consists in making sure to reconcile
democracy and European unity;
otherwise the slope of History
will lead to the united but
undemocratic Europe embodied
by the emerging populist trends.
