Continuity and development: CESI activity report 2016-2020

Highlights of the report include the following:

• Membership of CESI has grown continously. In 2020, CESI united 43 member organisations from most European countries, with a total of more than five million individual affiliates. Between 2016 and 2020, a total of nine trade union organisations joined CESI.

• An internal reflection group reviewed CESI’s work structures and bodies with a view to maximise the organisation’s output targets. First recommendations were already put in place, especially in terms of digital and online communiations, advocacy and membership engagement.

• The CESI Youth, founded in 2013, further institutionalised itself and increasingly started to work within CESI’s work structures.

• Policy advacacy and social dialogue was guided and informed by more than 75 adopted opinions and resolutions and more than 100 events between 2016 and 2020.

• Work in social dialogue evolved, with a successful recognitition as social partner in a further European sectoral social dialogue (postal services).

• CESI deepened its external partnerships and memberships between 2016 and 2020, with, for instance, the accession to the European Sunday Alliance, a renewed selection as a member of the European Commission’s consultative Platform for Tax Good Governance, and a successful application of the CESI Youth to become candidate member at the European Youth Forum.

• Between 2016 and 2020, CESI’s internal training centre, the Europe Academy, undertook a total of six projects that were typically each co-funded by the European Commission – putting an emphasis on running larger and longer projects than in the past, with more thematic symposiums and workshops, webinars and online meetings and capacity building sessions, as a basis for extensive PR or awareness-raising campaigns or a study, synopsis or similar other publication.

CESI Secretary General Klaus Heeger, re-elected at the Congress in December, said: “The last four years have been packed with experiences and lessons. We have been through highs and also lows, and we have met many companions along the way who have stood by us, not just as colleagues, but also as competent, trustworthy, committed and inspiring allies. As CESI, we can look back at these years with pride. But we must do so also with humility in mind. Humility given the tasks that lie ahead of us. Humility given the expectations of our members who have bestowed their trust upon us. And humility given the daily efforts and achievements of workers everywhere, who we are here to represent.”

The full report is available in English here.