History of Positive Money Europe
Positive Money Europe was founded in 2019, and grew out of Positive Money UK — a non-profit organisation founded in 2010 that targets the Bank of England. The European organisation was launched following the successful ‘Quantitative easing for the people’ campaign, which targeted the European Central Bank.
The early days of Positive Money
Positive Money UK was founded in 2010 because no one was talking about how banks create money and the role that this played in the 2008 financial crisis. The organisation quickly built a following of ordinary people, economists and financial industry insiders, who all recognised that it is impossible to understand many of the problems with our economy without looking at how money is created.
At the time, money reform was not widely spoken about. Since then, however, the topic has come out of the fringes and has entered the mainstream debate. In 2014, the Bank of England published a paper that confirmed what we had been saying about how new money enters the economy. Other central banks, including the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bundesbank, have followed suit.
Positive Money UK has since successfully initiated debates in the UK parliament, submitted petitions to decision-makers, and built a network of 66,000 supporters and 13 local groups across the UK.
Positive Money goes international
In 2013, we launched the ‘International Movement for Monetary Reform’, in order to support the growth of new money reform movements across the world and develop collaboration between them. Today, there are more than 22 national movements pushing for money reform in their countries.
Positive Money comes to Europe
In 2015, Positive Money went a step further by launching its campaign ‘Quantitative easing for people’ in the Eurozone. Together with a coalition of 20 civil society organisations, we succeeded in promoting alternative monetary policy ideas, such as green quantitative easing and helicopter money within the European Union.
Following this successful campaign, Positive Money’s European office was officially set up in 2019 by Stanislas Jourdan, who had led the QE for people campaign and who served as the Executive Director of the European branch until June 2023.
In just four years, Positive Money Europe has grown its team to nine people, its email subscriber base to 5,700 supporters, and its social media follower base to 9,350 on Facebook and 8,120 on Twitter.
Highlights
November 2016: In an annual report on the ECB, the European Parliament expresses criticism towards Quantitave Easing (QE) and proposes to channel QE towards ‘smart investments’.
December 2016: The ECB publishes a letter outlining that helicopter money could be feasible under certain conditions.
June 2017: Together with 38 MEPs, we push the ECB to improve the transparency of the corporate QE programme. A few weeks later, the ECB partly addresses our demands by setting up new transparency standards.
October 2018: Wemove.EU, Eurodad and Positive Money Europe hand over a petition demanding the return of ECB profits to Greece, signed by more than 117,000 citizens, to the Euro Group’s spokesperson in Brussels.
January 2019: In its annual resolution on the ECB, the European Parliament adopts several of Positive Money Europe’s proposals in the areas of transparency and governance.
November 2019 : In an open letter signed by 165 academics and civil society representatives, we remind the newly appointed ECB President, Christine Lagarde, that the ECB is legally bound to the Paris Climate Agreement. One month later, we meet with Christine Lagarde to hand over the letter.
May 2020: Christine Lagarde reaffirms the importance of climate change following our open letter highlighting that the ECB should not sideline its work on climate change due to the Covid19 crisis.
September 2020: Only five days after the launch of our publication on ‘Green Targeted Longer Term Refinancing Operations (TLTROs)‘, Christine Lagarde praises the report during a hearing at the European Parliament, demonstrating the impact of our work.
November 2020: We coordinate a letter signed by eight MEPs from across the political divide demanding answers to the ECB’s inaction on helicopter money.
February 2021: We organise a policy roundtable, with the ECB’s supervisory board member Elizabeth McCaul and several high-level experts, to debate how the EU should respond to the possible rise in non-performing loans after the Covid19 crisis.
October 2021: Our first ever public action focusses public attention on the inaction on climate of the governor of the central bank of Belgium, Pierre Wunsch.
October 2021: 10 citizens from five Eurozone countries present the conclusions of the European Citizens Bank project to Members of the European Parliament in Brussels.
February 2022: The ECB Annual Report has the longest climate change section ever and gets approved with the largest majority in the last 10 years.
March 2022: We launch the Unlock campaign with a coalition of partners in France, Spain and at the EU level, demanding action from the ECB to do its part in ensuring the green transition of Europe’s building stock.