— Rob Jetten’s ego
Rob Jetten could not have made it to the congress due to political turmoil again dwelling, however he was nonetheless its largest speaking level. Nonetheless using excessive off D66’s sweeping election victory in October, the Dutch prime minister embodied the optimism Europe’s liberals had been looking for after years of electoral setbacks — incomes him ALDE’s Liberal of the Yr award.
His marketing campaign in opposition to the far proper, constructed round optimistic messaging and broad guarantees of a greater future, grew to become the dominant theme in Vienna. “We’re liberals as a result of we consider change is feasible,” Jetten mentioned in a video message. “Authoritarians can promote concern, populists can promote anger, however we liberals, we will supply progress … the sort that makes folks’s lives safer, freer and extra affluent.”
Jetten’s victory additionally strengthened the socially liberal camp, which sees liberalism as about greater than free markets, putting equal emphasis on civil rights, local weather motion and progressive social insurance policies. D66, the U.Okay. Liberal Democrats and Progressive Slovakia all received vice presidencies, whereas Belgium’s liberals, backed by the get together’s extra basic market-oriented wing, misplaced out. MEP Svenja Hahn was reelected ALDE president, however not one of the adopted resolutions mirrored the German FDP-led camp’s push for sweeping deregulation.
— The get together’s donors
Amid dozens of aspect occasions on the congress, just a few had been held behind closed doorways and by invitation solely, together with two “stakeholder roundtables” bringing collectively senior get together officers and liberal MEPs with executives from firms that additionally occur to be ALDE’s largest company donors.
