Richard Golian

1995-born. Charles University alum. Head of Performance at Mixit. 10+ years in marketing and data.

Castellano Français Slovenčina

Manage subscription Choose a plan

RSS
Newsletter
New articles to your inbox

Article

Volt Europa before the 2019 elections

New European party
Richard Golian
Richard Golian · 4 400 reads
Hi, I am Richard. On this blog, I share thoughts, personal stories — and what I am working on. I hope this article brings you some value.
Listen to this article
0:00 / 0:00

A truly pan‑European political party? One programme for all of Europe, individual membership, shared funding and a single headquarters?

Some might say that European Parliament elections would become clearer. Others might argue they would become more democratic. And still others believe in acting rather than talking. Thus Volt Europa was born. In Slovakia the movement remains largely unknown; in France it even appears on national television.

Volt Europa is running in this year’s European Parliament elections. But given its youth and limited recognition across Europe, we cannot expect a major victory—at least not yet. Perhaps in five or ten years we will hear more of them, depending on their activity and growth.

They offer real change: a change in how politics is conducted within the European Union. Paradoxically, they criticise what Eurosceptics also focus on—the so‑called democratic deficit of the EU.

Continue

Continue reading

Enter your email to unlock this article and join the newsletter. You can unsubscribe anytime.

Summary

One programme across the entire continent. 140 conflicting party programmes create voter confusion — Volt proposes a single coherent alternative. For the 2019 European Parliament elections, the primary goal was introducing the concept. The experiment continues.

Common questions on this article's topic

What is Volt Europa?
Volt Europa is a pan-European political movement founded in 2017 that operates with a single common programme across the entire continent. Unlike traditional parties that exist only within national borders, Volt uses one membership, one funding model, and a shared organisational structure. In the 2019 European Parliament elections, Volt ran in eight member states and won its first seat through Damian Boeselager on the German list.
How does Volt Europa differ from traditional European parties?
Traditional parties in EU elections each present their own national programme — resulting in dozens of different and often conflicting platforms across member states. As described in the article, voters face roughly 140 different party programmes across the EU, making it difficult to know what difference a handful of MEPs from a small country can make. Volt proposes a single coherent alternative: one programme for the entire continent.
What is the EU democratic deficit and how does Volt address it?
The democratic deficit refers to the perception that EU institutions lack sufficient democratic accountability and citizen participation. In the article, Volt is described as criticising the same issues Eurosceptics raise — but from the opposite direction. Rather than withdrawing from European integration, Volt advocates for making EU elections more democratic: enabling citizens to vote for candidates from any member state, giving the European Parliament the power to propose laws, and electing European leaders through a transparent process.
Can a pan-European party actually work?
EU law does not permit a single legal entity to run across all member states, so Volt operates through nationally registered parties united under one programme and leadership structure. Despite this legal complexity, by 2019 Volt had already built a presence in multiple countries and attracted passionate volunteers willing to travel hours for meetings. In the article, the movement is described as still young and unlikely to achieve a major victory immediately — but as a long-term project that could grow significantly over five to ten years.
Is Volt Europa pro-EU or anti-EU?
Volt is explicitly pro-European, advocating for deeper integration and a more united continent. However, it distinguishes itself from uncritical pro-EU positions by actively addressing structural problems within the EU — particularly the democratic deficit and the lack of citizen engagement. In the article, this is presented as a paradox: Volt criticises what Eurosceptics also focus on, but proposes more democracy rather than less Europe.
Why do not most people care about European elections?
In the article, the answer is structural: citizens cannot choose European leaders through these elections, they do not vote on a single ambitious programme, and the representatives they elect cannot even propose new laws. The result is a system that feels distant and incomprehensible. Volt's solution is to make European elections function more like national ones — with clear leaders, a unified programme, and real legislative power for elected representatives.
Richard Golian

If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.

More articles

Where the Money Goes When AI Takes the Work

Prague, 13 May 2026. On my way to work I started thinking about something that stayed with me for days. If most routine work on a computer disappears in the next ten years, and a large share of repetitive manual work disappears with it, what happens to the flow of money? Who pays whom for what? Which economic layers will exist, how large will they be, and what relationships will run between them? This is the six-layer map I sketched as an answer.

15 May 2026·40 reads
Building an AI Stock Market Prediction System That Grades Itself

I am building an AI system to predict the S&P 500. It runs on my own machine, uses free public data — yfinance, FRED, the Shiller dataset — and grades every forecast against reality. This series documents the build itself: the decisions, the methodology, the mistakes. What I will eventually share from the running system is a separate question, and an honest one.

26 April 2026·611 reads
AI sales forecast: 9 traps so far

Yesterday I could not tear myself away from the computer. When I lifted my head, it was half past eight in the evening. I had been sitting alone upstairs for about three hours.

25 April 2026·581 reads
Will AI take my job?

Will AI take my job? A certified Google trainer told me in June 2024 that my profession would cease to exist. Twenty-two months later, my job title has not changed — but ninety percent of what I do during the day is different. I have delegated more of my thinking to AI agents than I thought possible. I am not afraid. This is why, and what it means for anyone asking the same question.

23 April 2026·364 reads
€50,000 Quote vs. Two Hours with Claude Code

One hour. Fifty-five minutes. That is how long it took to build what a Czech software firm had quoted at over €50,000. I built it with Claude Code. Not a prototype. Not a proof of concept. A working tool — the one the company actually needed. By the evening of the same day, it was running on staging. This is not about Claude Code. It is about what Claude Code exposes.

18 April 2026·717 reads
Is AI Making Us Dumber?

I have conducted roughly one hundred and fifty practical interviews over the past four years. Fifty for data specialist roles. A hundred for advertising and performance marketing specialists. Almost every one of them involved sitting down with a candidate over a practical task — something close to a real problem we actually need to solve at the company. Not theory. Not trivia. Applied problem-solving. Over time, I started noticing a pattern.

14 April 2026·670 reads
What AI Hides From You

Before you can teach AI to understand anything, you need to see what it is hiding from you.

11 April 2026·667 reads
When Your AI Agent Joins the Team

The moment other people needed access to it, the problem changed completely. It was no longer about whether the agent could learn. It was about who gets to teach it.

8 April 2026·823 reads
Training an AI Agent That Learns Between Sessions

I wanted to build an agent that doesn't just assist. One that acts.

4 April 2026·874 reads
Local AI Model Limitations: Why I Switched from Ollama to Claude for Autonomous Agents

This is what I learned about local vs cloud AI, and why I switched to Claude Code.

3 April 2026·1 473 reads
Full AI agents or fully offline.

Four days in Catalonia. No computer, no AI, almost no social media. I bought this notebook so that I could write down what I would think about, and what I would come across and learn on the trip.

10.5.2026·322 reads
NEWSLETTER
What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.
Sent the first Sunday of the month. Unsubscribe anytime.