Twenty Years of European Greens
1984 - 2004
edited by Arnold Cassola & Per Gahrton
Dag Viljen Poleszynski
Miljopartiet de Groenne (Norway)
- EGC delegate in Majvik, Finland 1993
My recollection of the meeting in Majvik is one of great enthusiasm and community. In particular in the non-EU group we worked closely together, and many bonds of friendship were knit. The hosts were well organized, and the programme ran smoothly without any hitches.
Now 10 years later I sit back with mixed feelings about what we indeed did achieve: All the former EFTA-countries, except Iceland, Norway and Switzerland are EU members (but Norway and Iceland are undemocratically obliged to follow EU directives nevertheless because of our European Economic Area agreement), and the green parties seem to have a very marginal, if not non-existant (as is the case for Norway), role in politics. The rich world is continuing on its joint road towards ecological disaster and, in my opinion, the EU has turned out to be even more undemocratic than I feared 10 years ago. The further integration and emergence of a new Superstate is taking shape.
Therefore, despite the spirit of Majvik which is still lingering on, I look to the EU with great pessimism.
One issue which engages me full time these days, is health politics, where all EU and EFTA countries are now plunging into privatization and more restrictive attitudes towards people’s right to chose their own way towards better health. The EU seems to be run by transnational pharmaceutical companies, which work with the undemocratic institutions of the EU to limit the free sale of vitamins and minerals, and potentially, all natural medicines and herbs in competition with patented drugs. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the green parties in Europe have not been able to attract public attention for their initiatives in the struggle for health freedom here and in other areas.
As a consequence of the non-influence of The Green Party in Norwegian politics, I have engaged myself more directly in health policies in the media, through scientific (as a scientific collaborator of this “Nordic Journal for Biological Medicine”) and popular publications (as editor of a new popular journal on nutrition and health, “Mat & Helse”), and in education
