History of UBIE

UBIE was started at the end of the European Citizens’ Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income which was launched in 2013 as the first step towards the consolidation of a movement for Basic Income in Europe. This initiative — the very first of its kind worldwide — achieved to collect 300,000 signatures in the EU and involved more than 25 countries across the EU.

have triggered the creation of new groups promoting UBI in several european countries such as Greece, UK, Portugal, Romania.

Participants of the first meeting in Brussels
Participants of the first meeting in Brussels

The preparation process of the European Citizen’s Initiative started in April 2012, with a first meeting organised in the European Parliament of Brussels.

About 50 participants from all across Europe participated and decided to form a Working European Citizens’ Committee. This committee met quarterly and became the informal decision-taking body of the ECI Campaign. Since April 2012, the committee met in Paris, (july 2012) Munich (september 2012), Firenze (october 2012), Strasbourg (february 2013), Koln (may 2013), Berlin (september 2013, Luxembourg (december 2013).

At the last meeting in Luxembourg, the Committee decided unanimously to create a new formal organisation to keep up the momentum generated during the European Citizens’ Initiative and build the movement further.

european-initiative-basic-income-300x191Another meeting took place in Brussels on february 17th 2014 with organisers from 17 european countries including Norway. It was decided to name our organisation “Unconditional Basic Income Europe “(UBIE).

Meetings of UBIE have been in Athens (september 2014), Vienna (january 2015), Maribor (march 2015)

In june 2015 UBIE  was accepted as an AISBL (Association internationale sans but lucratif – International Non-Profit Organization) in Belgium. We are only waiting for the publication to the official journal of Belgium now.

Thank you to all who to what has been a very long and tortuous process, both with your work on the constitution and with your generous donations so we could afford to apply.

The final constitution is in French:  Constitution_UBIE_FR.pdf
There is an English version to be read here:  Constitution_UBIE_EN.pdf

We had to make some small changes to get it through the legal requirements for AISBL, but it is pretty much as we agreed in September in Athens.