To celebrate Europe Day 2026, Saturday 9th May, Cambridge for Europe held a rally outside the Guildhall in Cambridge on the theme “Defending Unity, Embracing Diversity”.
Europe Day marks the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, which was presented on 9 May 1950 and set out a vision for a new Europe built on peaceful cooperation, and laying the foundations for the EU as we know it today.
Our speakers included:
- Paul Browne (Cambridge for Europe)
- Cllr Naomi Bennett (Cambridge City Council)
- Julia Seiber Boyd (Cambridge Szeged Society)
- Lewis Herbert (Former leader of Cambridge City Council)
- Cllr Cheney Payne (Cambridge City Council)
- Diana Shypovych (Cambridge University Ukrainian Society)
- Michael Clegg (Cambridge for Europe, Convoy4Ukraine)
- Emma Knaggs (Deputy CEO, European Movement UK)
All the speakers called for far more ambition from the government in returning the UK to the heart of Europe, which must mean aiming to rejoin the EU.
Julia Seiber Boyd spoke of how the TISZA party that ended Viktor Orban’s rule in Hungary is named after the Tisza river that flows through Cambridge’s twin city of Szeged in Hungary, and that we should take inspiration from the defeat of autocratic populism there.
Diana Shypovych of the Cambridge University Ukrainian Society made a moving speech about what Europe Day means to the people of Ukraine.
People often say that light always prevails over darkness. But light and darkness do not exist on their own – they are carried by people. While Ukrainians are carrying that light in their hearts, Russia is stumbling in the darkness of her own violence.”
Europe Day commemorates the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 — a vision that laid the foundations for a united Europe after the devastation of the Second World War. But the European project was never only about economics or institutions. It was also a promise: that our continent would never again be consumed by tyranny, imperial violence, and war.”
Today, Ukrainians are defending those same European values once again – freedom, democracy, dignity, and the right of nations to determine their own future.”
Europe Day therefore cannot only be about celebration. It must also be about responsibility: responsibility to protect the values we so often speak about with ease, and responsibility not to look away from Ukraine.”
A united Europe must ensure that Ukraine remains not only in Europe, but alive, free, and heard.”
In his opening speech, Paul Browne, Chair of Cambridge for Europe, said:
Happy Europe Day!
It’s absolutely right that we celebrate Europe Day, because Europe Day celebrates one of the greatest achievements in Europe’s history.
Europe Day celebrates the Schuman Declaration that led to today’s EU of 27 countries, united not by war and conquest, but by democracy, cooperation, solidarity, human rights, and the rule of law.
A Europe united by the four freedoms – freedom of movement of goods, of services, of capital, and most importantly of citizens.
Thanks to the visionary ideas set out 76 years ago in the Schuman Declaration, a continent once divided by war, then by an iron curtain, is now “United in Diversity”, but as we look at the news today it’s clear that work is still not done. Far from it.
War on a scale unimaginable 20 years ago has returned to Europe. The Russian dictatorship seeks to destroy the European democracy of Ukraine, and to undermine the unity that has been achieved in Europe.
The Schuman Declaration stated that “Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity”.
Today that solidarity is needed nowhere more than with Ukraine. More than four years after the brutal full-scale Russian invasion began, the people of Ukraine continue fight bravely, and to endure terrible loss, to preserve their Freedom, their Democracy, and their European future.
The Schuman Declaration also stated that “World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it” and the €90 billion loan to Ukraine recently agreed by the EU, to be repaid from Russian war reparations, is a good example of what Europe’ creative efforts can achieve when Europe works together.
Buthe democracies of Europe must redouble these efforts; there is much more we can and should do to invest in Ukraine and to strengthen our collective security. We must stand with Ukraine until Russia’s aggression is finally defeated. Ukraine’s freedom is our freedom!
With the Trump administration actively seeking to undermine the EU, the democracies of Europe must unite to defend our shared values. The dictators and the corrupt populists, and the tech bros and crypto billionaires who back them, hate the EU. They seek to weaken, divide, and destroy it.
Why, because they know that the EU is strong enough to hold them to account, to make rules to protect its citizens and to enforce them, and to make the bros pay their taxes. They know that individual European states, even larger ones like the UK, simply cannot hope to stand up to the autocrats and their oligarch backers.
The reasons why Putin and Trump, Musk and Thiel all hate the EU are the same reasons why we should embrace it, why we should strengthen it, why we should rejoin it!
The local elections are a warning. You cannot counter corrupt, divisive, populists like Farage with managerialism, nor can you counter it with immigration policies that undermine our economy and weaken and divide our society. Policies that make the real problems voters experience worse, and which only serve to validate Faragist anti-immigration rhetoric.
What we need from the Government is a positive, coherent vision for the future of the UK, and that vision must include a return to Europe, for businesses and economic growth, for youth opportunities, for our collective security, and for environmental sustainability.
We need to be hopeful. We need be ambitious. These chaotic times demand it! We need to echo the slogan of the Tisza party in Hungary’s recent general election and say: “We are not afraid!”
If the voters of Hungary can kick out Viktor Orban after 16 years of corrupt, autocratic rule, then surely the voters of the UK can keep Farage, the British Orban, from gaining power in the first place. The lesson from Hungary is that the autocrats and their oligarch backers can be defeated!
Because most people in the UK don’t agree with Farage. Polling shows a clear majority now support rejoining the EU, just as a big majority support Freedom of Movement, so let’s stop being so damned coy.
Our aim must be for the UK to be back in the EU by Europe Day 2031. Some may say that’s somewhat ambitious, but can you really look over how the world has changed in the past decade, and say “you shouldn’t ask for that, it’s not possible”.
Now, more than ever, we need to be ambitious, we need to be hopeful. We need to rejopin the EU!
Photos: Peter Nixon
