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European Movement

European Union flag, used by the European Movement - Image by Željko Heimer, 1 May 2004

Presentation of the European Movement
Flag of the European Movement
Former flags of the European Movement

See also:

Presentation of the European Movement

The European Movement is a Europe-wide organization promoting European co-operation leading to the peaceful and democratic unification of Europe. It has many mainstream politicians as members, even here in the United Kingdom.

Roy Stilling, 2 May 1996

Flag of the European Movement

According to W. Crampton [cra91], the European Movement now uses the European Union flag, since not long after the European Union adopted the Council of Europe flag making it in effect the undisputed pan-European flag.

Roy Stilling, 1 May 1996

Former flags of the European Movement

Former flags of the European Movement - Images by Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 29 May 2025

Sierksma [sie63a] says that the flag was designed by Duncan Sandys for the European Movement congress in The Hague, June 1948. It was in fact the private property of an organization and not meant to be "the" European flag. On the technical side, the "E" should cover exactly 2/3 of the field.
According to Peter Diem, the first "big E" was red! Duncan Sandys's design was to be "modified in August 1948 for a congress in Strasbourg to symbolize hope [and] first flown in London in 1949" at a European economic congress.

Jan Mertens, 15 April 2007

The flag was red for June 1948, but we don't mention how long before that it was created, nor if it flew. However, according to Sierksma [sie63a], it was designed specifically for the meeting in The Hague. Sierksma depicts a green version, however.
The flag was then to be modified to green, but we're unclear whether that tense is a proposal, or merely a future tense of the past. That version flew in London 1949. . If we follow Sierksma, the colour change was probably at that meeting in The Hague.

Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 29 May 2025

Rabbow, in DTV-Lexikon politischer Symbole, 1970 [rab70], devotes 1.5 page to this symbol, mostly full of praise for easy design, recognizability, acceptable even to anti-Europeans, etc, etc, of which nothing was heard anymore after someone nicknamed it "Churchill's underpants".

Jarig Bakker, 17 March 2005