Discussion “Forging the European Ecosystem” by Ela Kagel (Platform Cooperatives Germany), Luca Pastorelli (DIESIS), Jan Zygmuntowski (CoopTechHub Poland), Ana Agirre (TAZEBAEZ) and Jose Mari Luzarraga (Mondragon) Facilitated by Jonas Pentzien (IÖW) as part of the #NewCommonSense conference, the 6th edition of the annual Platform Cooperatives Consortium conference.

Building on the questions raised in the previous presentation, we discuss concrete strategies for forging a European ecosystem for platform co-ops with activists from Spain, Belgium, Germany, and Poland. We ask: Why is a European ecosystem needed in the first place? Which purpose would it fulfill? What kind of institutions are capable of creating meaningful relationships between platform co-ops? Which services could a pan-European ecosystem provide to platform co-ops on the ground? Which role can incubators play? —- About the Conference: The pandemic has plunged the whole world into disarray. One significant shift has been the ever-greater emphasis on the internet in our daily lives. Platform cooperatives allow us to take control of our relationship with the internet and the myriad of services it mediates. From November 12 to 18, 2021, the Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC), the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW), and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center hosted #TheNewCommonSense, the sixth edition of the annual PCC Conference. Over seven days, more than 80 cooperative pioneers, workers, trade unionists, policymakers, researchers, and activists from over 20 countries came together to take stock of how platform co-ops have responded to the pandemic, to analyze supportive policy, and to discuss current experiments with data co-ops, token systems, and feminist tech infrastructures, among other subjects. Speakers included Francesca Bria, Trebor Scholz, McKenzie Wark, Sonia George, Jonas Pentzien, Sylvie Delacroix and many more. — For all information about the conference and the recordings go to: https://platform.coop/events/conferen… #TheNewCommonSense