Twenty Years of
European Greens
1984 - 2004
edited by Arnold Cassola &
Per Gahrton
Helmut Lippelt
Bündnis '90/Die Grünen (Germany)
-
former MP and Green Party pioneer
1978 was the year when in Germany the green party building process started. The Bunte Liste Hamburg, the Alternative Liste Berlin and the Grüne Liste Umweltschutz (GLU) in Lower Saxony went for regional elections. And with the help of the German Law on Election-Costs-Reembursement the Lower Saxonians, to their own surprise, earned a lot of money. This was the time when even the EU-governments felt, they had to bring the EU down to the level of their people and therefore called for the first European Elections in 1979. And it was also the time, when all over the country -and not only in Germany- NGOs, or as we called them BIs (Bürgerinitiativen), sprang up for Environment Protection, against Nuclear Power Plants and against the Stationing of Nuclear Missiles.
For the still small and isolated Green groups in Germany this was an unique opportunity: they called for a nationwide congress, wrote an election-platform, put together a list of candidates and the Lower Saxonian Greens –I was at that time their chairman- then invited all grass-roots groups to join in this endeavour – posters, programm-pamphlets and transport were provided by us. And again- surprisingly we got 3.2% nationwide and this was the breakthrough in the party-building process. Five years later, in 1984, it became 8.2% and, together with some Dutch and Belgian Greens, seven German Greens entered the EP. Not enough to build an own parliamentary group, GRAEL was considered to be only a technical fraction. It was only in 1989, when the breakthrough on a broader European scale happened and 27 green MEPs arrived in Brussels, that they were able to establish their own parliamentary group.
To sum up: for the German Greens participation in the first European Election 1979 was not because of Europe or the EU, it was the means to establish our green party nationwide. We felt the EU was a bureaucratic alliance of big business and big government. Grassroots democracy could, at the utmost, translate their wishes with our help to the national government but certainly not to Brussels. The 1984 European elections happened when we were amidst our debate about fundamentalism or realpolitics. Therefore, we sent a mixed bag of MEPs to Brussels. Most of them felt it was more important to look after ecological disasters worldwide rather than to sit in a not so important parliament. Of course, we had some noteworthy exceptions, like the late Undine von Blotnitz who was always able to combine grassroots antinuclear engagement in Gorleben with hard parliamentary work in Brussels.
In 1990 we were thrown out of the national parliament, because we campaigned for a better climate and missed out on the importance of the reunification issue. I went back into the steering committee of the party and became its foreign relations speaker. In this capacity I also went to Brussels and became involved in the developments there on the side of the green parties. After 1984, they had formed a very looseknit coordination. But with all the divergent views of the MEPs of different green parties it became obvious that more had to be done. For different reasons: (1) to develop a more clear profile, a dialogue between party and parliamentary group had to be started. But there was no such counterweight as a party at the European level. There were only green parties, and the MEPs were looking more at their national executive than at a common denominator; (2) Of course, at that time there were also already some rumours about EU money to support European party structures. But, most important of all: (3) with the German Reunification accomplished, the wall had broken down and behind that wall the whole of Europe re-emerged in the open.
So the real debate in establishing the EFGP was: an EU-Federation or a Federation of Green Parties open to all future green parties in the whole of Europe? I am very happy that the latter idea succeeded in materializing. Especially in these years of Enlargement to the East of the EU our concept becomes even more neccessary than ever because it stands against new dividing lines in Europe.
Our work will, however, remain unfinished as long as strong green parties have not emerged all over the European continent.
