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Coordination Secretariat Member 1984 - 1989
- EGC delegate in Mayvik, Finland 1993
The cooperation among Greens Parties in Europe started slowly in a very small group of Central Western European Parties. Miljöpartiet De Gröna was among the real pioneers, taking part in some preliminary meetings in the early 80-ies. To my mind, very few of the participants then represented well-established political parties, such as Miljöpartiet, Ecolo, Agalev, Ecology Party, Comhaontas Glas, Dei Greng and maybe some others. The Finns (Vihreä) at first were very anti-party-minded and anarchistic, but got MPs early and then developed rapidly into a more mainstream party.
The situation among the Latins was usually chaotic. France had a number of competing movements, Spain several infinitesimal groups, all with a male, macho leader, Italy a loose “federation”, Portugal a party that was virtually an annex of the Communists. In the Netherlands there was competition between Green-Greens and Red-Greens. Die Grünen refused for a long time to join the Coordination if we didn’t also accept the Red-Greens (Groen Links), which we finally did after years of discussions and deliberations. Most of us were fed up with Die Grünen because we thought that they were too introverted, bogged down with infighting between Fundis and Realos and uninterested in Green action outside Germany.
The reply from some German Greens was that - for obvious historical reasons - they did not want to play the role of Big Brother. The effect was that mostly they did not take any responsibility at all for Greens outside Germany - but when they did intervene, it often had all the aspects of a Big Brother-action!
One infamous meeting in Cardedeu outside Barcelona (in 1985) where I was present to help forming a Spanish Green Party ended with one group calling the police to keep another out! And in Budapest an effort to start up a Green Party in the late 80-ies resulted in a first fight between different pacifist groupings denouncing each other as crypto-communist spies. Several times during my five years as Co-secretary I doubted that I would ever see a reasonably coherent European association of Green Parties.
And at the same time the basic political agreement was probably greater than today. All Greens were protesters, opponents. Everybody was against NATO and the Warsau Pact. Most were even sceptical of the EU, not least among Die Grünen. The most fiercely anti-EU Green Party of all was Die Grüne Alternative of Austria.
A mighty symbol of the feelings among most European Greens in the 80-ies was the Campaign “From two blocks to one world”. In April 28 1986 some of us visited the US and Soviet Embassies in Brussels with large pieces of ice which we placed outside to symbolically melt the Cold War. According to our press release, Guy Marimot of Les Verts rejected “any possible Third Power” and called for Europe to “withdraw from the blocs” and launch a non-military peace alternative. Jean Lambert of the Ecology Party stated that the Greens were “vociferous critics of the arms race” and were looking for alternatives. And I called for a “disarmament race”. At the Soviet Embassy we noticed an awkward mood. Later we got to know what the Soviets knew already - the explosion of Chernobyl disaster. That was the starting point for a basic change of the world, of Europe. Maybe also of Green Parties.
Sometimes I regret these years when we all were opponents, very far from executive power. Any power elite was by definition our enemy, be it Big Business, Big State, NATO, G7, Warsaw Pact or the EU-Commission. We knew streets and teargas better than plenary halls and champagne. But of course, we had created political parties, not just movements or lobby groups. So already in the 80-ies it was anticipated, even planned, that all this should change, that Greens should invade the structures of the enemy and take over.
