"Pulse for Europe" on the Day of the French Elections

 

A big gathering outside the Schloss hoping that France would not elect the far right candidate.  Fortunately the good people France had the good sense not to vote for Le Pen.

 I'm standing at the back, underneath the "o" in Europe. 

 

Pulse of Europe is a pro-European citizen's initiative, founded in Frankfurt, Germany in late 2016.  It aims at "encouraging citizens of the EU to speak out publicly in favour of a pan-European identity."  As Europe is facing democratic deficits, Brexit, as well as the growing popularity of right-wing populist and nationalist political parties, the initiative aims at counteracting euroscepticism. 

 

I sent greetings to everyone from the people of Bath, Braunschweig's twin city, which also holds a similar meeting every Sunday in the month.

 

Foundation and development, info from Wikipedia.

 

The citizen's initiative was founded by the German lawyers Daniel and Sabine Röder. Using their private network of friends and social media, they held the first public meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, at the end of November 2016.  About 200 people joined them.  Further demonstrations followed at weekly intervals in January 2017.

 

On 5th February 2017, about 600 participants met in Frankfurt.  People in the German towns of Karlsruhe, Freiburg, and Cologne as well as in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, followed suit.   During February 2017, the number of individual participants, as well as of locations, was rising.  The initiative also gained media attention in the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Korea  and France.

 

The first French demonstration took place in Paris on 26 February.  Demonstrations take place in various European cities on a weekly schedule, every Sunday at 2 pm. On 5th March, public meetings were held in 35 European cities. 28 of these were German,  but citizens also met in Amsterdam, the French cities of Paris,  Strasbourg, Montpellier, Toulouse and Lyon, and in the English city of Bath. 

 

 On 5th March 2017, the number of individual attendees ranged from between 40 and more than 3,000.    On 12th March 2017, more than 20,000 people joined demonstrations in more than 40 European cities.