Twenty Years of European Greens
1984 - 2004
edited by Arnold Cassola & Per Gahrton
Marie Schaffer-Wyler
Die Grünen/Les Verts (Switzerland)
- EFGP Committee member 2000 – 2003
My first encounter with the EFGP was at the Council meeting in Budapest in 1995. I had left Switzerland on very short notice as a replacement for the former delegate, without instructions or proper preparation. Arriving in Budapest, my impressions were ambiguous: on one hand, as a newcomer, I was quickly integrated and felt immediately part of it. On the other hand, the “organization” of the Council left me somehow perplexed: people were moving around as in a beehive, nobody was ever on time and the election of the new secretary general was chaotic. At first, I doubted that this Federation could ever work.
During my term as a committee member which has been, so far, the most interesting part in my political life, I discovered the mechanisms of EFGP as well as its richness which lies in its composition: the forces and experiences of members coming from very different cultural and political backgrounds. Why do so many new green movements apply for EFGP membership? Not only can they learn from experiences already made, but being a member of a European Federation can give especially emerging parties better visibility in their own countries.
Even though the expression “sustainable development” has integrated the speeches of many politicians, few are the non-greens who really mean to apply its criteria in their political work. It seems that we Greens are still the only political movement with the explicit goals to take into account the environment and change economic growth into sustainable development, to fight for social justice, peace and democracy. Greens are therefore indispensable, not only in European politics but worldwide too.
The immediate challenge for the European Green movement is to evolve from a Federation into a European Green party. The difficulty will be to include also the parties from non-EU, non aligned and/or neutral countries. We have to avoid the creation of a two level party with the ones “inside” and the ones “outside”. Also, the national parties with no representatives in EU-Parliament will have to stay actively involved in the new EU party.
We need to strengthen the Green group in the European Parliament in order to influence the European Union from within. There is still a lot of work to do to achieve more democracy, more transparency and a higher awareness of the necessities of the environment. However, the enlargement of the EU and the EU elections in 2004 should not completely use up the human resources and the financial capacities of EFGP. There is still Green life outside the EU.
