mhtest 1

9:00 - 9:10
Uffe Elbæk, the Alternative

Welcome speech
9:10 - 9:30
Olli Kangas

9:30 - 9:50
Sjir Hoeijmakers
TITLE: Municipal Basic Income-Related Experiments in the Netherlands: How They Have Arisen, What They Entail, and Their Current Status

ABSTRACT
What are the reasons that basic income debate has become more widespread in the past two years in the Netherlands, and how did this lead to the current municipal experiments. Sjir will deal specifically with the political context and the various reasons for the debate and the plans for experiments to arise. He will also explain how the municipal experiments relate to basic income but also how most of them are not fully implemented basic income experiments, and why this has come to be. Finally, he will talk about the current status of the Dutch experiments on the practical, political and research level, and about what the next steps may be.
9:50 - 10:10
Guy Standing
TITLE: Basic Income Pilots:
Design and Implementation Principles

ABSTRACT
Globally, basic income has finally moved into the mainstream of political and social policy debate. This reflects in part the relentless growth of inequality and insecurity and the growth of the precariat, leaving mainstream politicians looking out of touch with 21st century trends.
This presentation will briefly outline the arguments for and against a basic income, and draw from that in assessing recent and ongoing pilot basic income schemes. It will emphasise the principles that must be respected and the methods of policy evaluation. It will draw on experience in designing and implementing basic income pilots and on several recent books and papers.

10:10 - 10:30
Camilla Gregersen

10:30 - 10:50
Evelyn Forget
TITLE: Canadian Pilots, Past and Present

ABSTRACT
This presentation discusses key findings from the MINCOME experiment run in Canada in the mid-1970s. It examines how the planned pilot in the province of Ontario might draw on this evidence to test basic income in a society and economy that have seen many changes since then.
10:50 - 11:00
Coffee break

11:00 - 11:20
Nicole Teke
TITLE: Basic Income Pilots i
ABSTRACT

Basic income France

Since the end of 2015, the idea of a basic income has been steadily gaining ground in France, especially in the political sphere as well as in the media, and might even be a hot topic for the elections of 2017 (presidential and general).
This surge of interest has particularly been driven by two major reports handed out to the government in the past months:
January 2016: National Digital Council’s report: This report, written by the National Digital Council, on the Ministry of Labor’s demand, aimed at analyzing the coming digital evolutions and how to cope with unemployment related to them. Basic income was presented as a potential way to face jobs’ loss due to growing automation.
April 2016: report on the welfare system reform: This report supported several measures presented by the French Movement for a Basic Income (MFRB) when it was auditioned by the commission in charge of the report, especially related to a gradual basic income instauration that could start with the automatic and individual payment of the minimum income scheme. Following this report, Prime Minister Manuel Valls, announced on April 18th, that the government was opening the debate on the issue of a “universal income” in order to be able to implement it by 2018, yet declaring in the same sentence that this same project would only target the poorest.
Additionally, a bill is to be presented to the French Parliament next September by MP Isabelle Attard, in order to enable the funding of basic income feasibility studies as well as pilot-projects.
More concretely, some experiments are already planned or are being discussed, especially in the Aquitaine region (South-Western France):
Experiment launched by the Aquitaine Regional Council: On July 2015, the Aquitaine Regional Council voted unanimously in favor of an experiment in the region, a project led by Martine Alcorta and the Green Party. So the pilot is now under preparation and a working group (including the MFRB) has been constituted in order to define the frame and conditions of the pilot. The results of this feasibility study will be presented in June 2017. The amount of this basic income experiment would be at the level of the minimum wage (around 1 400€).
Tera’s project: this eco-village project called Tera (also in the Aquitaine region), led by Frédéric Bosqué, will include a basic income component that will be distributed in the form of a local currency. The interest of this project is that it will last at least 10 years, so the results will enable us to have a better vision on how basic income can have an impact on a longer-term basis.
Several additional pilot-projects are starting to be discussed and could be launched at a national but also at the European level, which could be coordinated by the European network UBIE, especially if we manage to get the – financial - support from the part of European institutions.
11:20 - 11:40
Anne Marie Frederiksen
TITLE: Long-term Unemployed taking the Lead - an Experiment with Self-Management

ABSTRACT:
What would happen if long-term unemployed were allowed to decide for themselves what at least some of the money, that is spent every year to prepare them for the labour market, should be used for?
The municipality of Aarhus has decided to find out and, in collaboration with the Social Development Center and the Velux Foundation, it has initiated a development project which has made it financially possible to give long-term unemployed a cash grant of up to DKK 50,000 (approx. € 6700). The recipient is personally responsible for how and for what the money is spent.
The objective is to make way for a much wider range of options than is possible with traditional welfare benefits and allow the citizen the possibility of self-ownership and -management.
The overall goal is to establish a new culture of dialogue in the occupation-targeted collaboration between citizen and municipality.
At the conference, will be presented the first insight and results from the experiment.

11:40 - 12:00
Josephine Fock

12:00 - 13:30
Lunch break

13:30 - 13:50
Niels I. Meyer
TITLE: Basic Income from the Perspective of Technological Unemployment
ABSTRACT
The Danish proposal in 1978 for a Citizens Salary (UBI) was focusing on the special needs for selected groups of people like writers, artists, NGO´s etc. to be released from the traditional obligations of the labor market. In recent years, this goal of the UBI has been extended to include the increasing number of people that are made jobless due to the technological development (robots etc.). The panel contribution will focus on the problems and possible solutions for this change in focus in connection with pilot projects.
13:50 - 14:30
Debate in the panel and in plenum

14:30 - 15:00
Coffee break

15:00 - 16:30
Debate and closing