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The association

Europe is important to me, but what can I myself do for Europe? This is where our non-partisan, non-profit initiative “Do something for Europe!”, founded in February 2019, comes into play. We see ourselves as a civic facilitator, inspiring, motivating and supporting individuals, groups and institutions who want to get involved and make a commitment to a united Europe and its values. “Do something for Europe!” aims to encourage people to stand up for Europe, actively and visibly. We can’t abandon Europe to the people who want to abolish it. Let’s do something for Europe together!

For us, in concrete terms that means:

The association “Do something for Europe!” acts as a springboard for projects, campaigns and support measures designed to bring to life these four imperatives. We work with a range of cooperation and project partners to do so.

In keeping with our non-partisan stance, we have deliberately chosen not to make any concrete political demands or develop any concepts concerning how Europe or the European Union should develop. Rather, we are concerned with strengthening the basic shared pro-European consensus and bringing to life the European idea in terms of understanding among nations, with the emphasis not on the institutions of Europe but on the people of Europe.

You think you or your organisation can do something for Europe? Let’s talk.

Our Board

Martin Schulz

Chairman of the board

Franziska Brantner

Deputy chairwoman of the board

Johannes Kram

Board member

Our founding members

Martin Schulz

Martin Schulz is a member of the 19th German Bundestag. He served as the leader of the SPD (German Social Democratic Party), was a candidate for the German chancellorship and spent 23 years as a Member of the European Parliament, including two terms as President from 2012 to 2017. In 2015 he was awarded the Charlemagne Prize for his outstanding efforts towards a strengthening of the European Parliament and democratic legitimation in the EU.

Franziska Brantner

Franziska Brantner is the Spokesperson for European Affairs and Parliamentary Secretary of the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary party within the German Bundestag. In 2013 she was elected to represent the constituency of Heidelberg in the Bundestag, where she is now Chairwoman of the EU Committee and a deputy member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
She was a Member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2013. As a student, she was involved in promoting women’s rights at the United Nations. Having grown up in a border region and studied in France before graduating with a doctorate in political science, she cares passionately about European cohesion.

Horand Knaup

Horand Knaup grew up in the southern-Baden border triangle, close to two frontiers and, back then at least, actual physical barriers. Later, he studied political science and geography in Freiburg and Marburg. In 1984 he completed a traineeship at the Badische Zeitung in Freiburg.
His early years as a journalist were spent going between Basel, Alsace and Freiburg. In 1995 he became the Bonn correspondent of the Badische Zeitung. In 1998 he moved to the capital-city office of the SPIEGEL. From 2008 to 2013 he was based in Nairobi as the SPIEGEL’s African correspondent before moving back to the magazine’s Berlin office. He has been a freelance journalist since autumn 2017. He also co-authored “Aus Fehlern lernen” (“Learning from Mistakes”), the election campaign analysis by the SPD (German Social Democratic Party).

Carolina Chimoy

As a journalist for international German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Carolina Chimoy presents “Cuadriga”, a televised debate/talk show about international relations, along with other programmes. She has also worked as a correspondent in Washington and regularly visits Latin America and other regions to research her reports. Her most recent travels saw her following in the footsteps of Alexander von Humboldt to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth.
Chimoy has for over a decade also been working on transnational relations between America and Europe. In 2015 she covered the arrival at various European borders of a large influx of refugees, an event that left an especially strong impression on her. The experience strengthened her convictions with regard to the importance of a humanist Europe and the dangers posed by the new walls currently going up inside people’s heads.

Klaas Heufer-Umlauf

Klaas Heufer-Umlauf began his TV career at the music channel Viva. Moving to MTV, he presented the show “MTV Home” with Joko Winterscheidt. He has been a well-known public figure since “Circus HalliGalli”, another show he presented alongside Winterscheidt, and has also been known for many years as an actor, singer and TV producer.
For the 2017 German parliamentary election, he met senior politicians on the show “Ein Mann eine Wahl” (“One man one vote”). Heufer-Umlauf has presented the show “Late Night Berlin” since 2018. He expresses his musical leanings as a member of the band Gloria and is also active behind the camera, campaigning on behalf of leukaemia sufferers and against right-wing radicalism. As a member of “Freunde fürs Leben – e. V.” (“Friends for Life”), he attempts to make depression more comprehensible to non-sufferers in order to promote better mutual understanding. Klaas Heufer-Umlauf also supports various other projects, such as the child welfare organisation “Die Arche” (“The Ark”).

Vera Lisakowski

Vera Lisakowski has been working at the Grimme-Institut since 2007, overseeing the competition for the Grimme Online Award given to qualifying journalistic websites. She is also involved in research projects at the Grimme Forschungskolleg (Grimme College of Research), dealing with such issues as the financing of online content that impacts on democracy or the relationship between freedom and the Internet.
She is also involved in the content and structuring of Social Community Day, most recently with a piece entitled “Neue Heimat Internet” (“The Internet – a New Homeland”). An academically trained online editor and graduate engineer in architecture, she was previously a freelance journalist on architecture and art websites and a TV culture magazine, and she remains active as a journalist today.

Johannes Kram

Johannes Kram is an author, blogger, activist and marketing strategist. He has written various theatre plays, writes a column for BILDblog and was a founding editor of the media think tank VOCER. In 2017 the Charta der Vielfalt (“German Diversity Charter”) initiative chose him as an ambassador for the field of sexual orientation and identity. In 2016 his Nollendorfblog site was nominated for the Grimme Online Award. March 2018 saw the publication of his book “Ich hab ja nichts gegen Schwule, aber – Die schreckliche nette Homophobie in der Mitte der Gesellschaft” (“I’ve Got Nothing against Gays but … the Nice Ghastly Homophobia at the Heart of Our Society”).

Patroness

Prof. Monika Grütters MdB

Monika Grütters was born in Münster and studied German, art history and political science at the universities of Münster and Bonn. She then gained professional experience in the fields of opera, publishing and museums.
From 1998 to 2013 she was the Chairwoman of the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor (“Brandenburg Gate Foundation”). She has been an honorary professor of Arts and Media Administration at Freie Universität Berlin since 1999. Monika Grütters has been a member of the executive board of the CDU (“Christian Democratic Union of Germany”) since December 2016. From 1995 to 2005 she was a member of the Berlin House of Representatives, where she was CDU spokesperson for science and cultural policy. She has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2005, chairing the Committee on Culture and Media Affairs from 2009 to 2013. Following her re-election in December 2013, she has been Minister of State and Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Chairman of the Advisory Board

Alexander Graf Lambsdorff

Alexander, Count Lambsdorff (*1966 in Cologne) has since autumn 2017 been a member of the German Bundestag and Deputy Chairman of the FDP (German Free Democratic Party) parliamentary party with responsibility for foreign, security, European und development policy.
He was a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2017, becoming Vice-President of the European Parliament with responsibility for democracy and human rights in 2014. Previously, he spent five years as Deputy Chairman of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group (ALDE). Most recently, Count Lambsdorff served as a member of the Committee on International Trade (INTA) and as a deputy member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET). He has also been a member of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee and of the European Parliament's delegation for relations with Israel. From 2011 to 2017 Count Lambsdorff was Chairman of the FDP delegation in the European Parliament. Drawing on his expertise as a trained diplomat, Count Lambsdorff has already served as head of a number of EU election observation missions in various Asian and African countries.

Managing Director

Alfonso Pantisano

Tu was für Europa e.V.

Greifenhagener Str. 48

10437 Berlin

info@do-something-for-europe.com