On Thursday 8th November, seven citizens´ rights campaigns and five future campaigns were represented at the Keep Me Posted (KMP) Campaigner´s day that was organised Keep Me Posted EU and hosted by the Royal Mail.

This third campaigner´s day took place at the headquarters of Royal Mail in London. Apart from five European campaigns (UK, Spain, Slovenia, Germany, EU), Kellie Northwood and Phil Riebel presented the Australian and North American campaigns respectively.

All campaigns gave updates on recent challenges and success stories.

The Spanish Yo decido como recibo campaign´s most recent project is called Fucifactura, a platform to support consumer claims/complaints with a landing page and a call center, generating formal complaints and massive inspections. Overall their activities over the last four year have been confirmed to have halted the decline in transactions in Spain.

In the UK further 10 companies are in the process of being awarded a mark of distinction for respecting consumers´ right to choose. The Slovenian KMP campaign (Poslji mi pismo) is currently advocating for amendments to the Slovenian Consumer Protection Act and the EU campaign is busy preparing the elections to the European Parliament next year. In Germany, campaigners achieved the support of Ver.di, the biggest German trade union, the private postal operators´ federation and the German paper merchants.

KMP Australia reported about the impressive range of actions they have undertaken since their launch in April 2016. KMP Australia has 7000 supporters and got a media coverage of over 120 articles, blogs and radio emissions. In October 2018 they celebrated their biggest success: a ban of paper billing fees through the approval of a respective consumer protection legislation if companies fail to refrain from such fees in the next twelve months (see).

Canada and the USA will launch Keep Me Posted NA end of this month with a focus on educating and challenging corporations that are removing consumer choice and that are charging fees for paper. Since March they have prepared the communication platform and marketing material as well as successfully raised funds to start off asap.

Representatives from South Africa, Brazil, France and Portugal who are eager to establish citizen´s rights campaigns in their countries as soon as possible attended to learn from existing campaigns’ experiences.

During this very inspiring meeting, further communication and cooperation between the campaigns was agreed and the wish for an annual campaigner´s gathering was confirmed.