Twenty Years of European Greens
1984 - 2004
edited by Arnold Cassola & Per Gahrton
Frithjof Schmidt
Bündnis '90/Die Grünen (Germany)
- EFGP committee member 2000- to date
In 1991 I became secretary for international politics of the Federal board of the German greens and for the first time I attended a meeting of the European Coordination of Green Parties. It was an exciting experience to see that the green movement had grown up to become a European wide political family. There was an interesting and a little bit chaotic exchange of experiences and different views. It was just a meeting of a movement, without any political structure behind it. No coherent political debate was possible. There were similar politics in many fields, but no common politics. Despite this, everybody in the coordination felt, that the time had come for a closer cooperation. And so we started the adventure to design the structure of the European Federation of Green Parties, with guiding principles, statutes, a congress with some two hundred delegates every three years, a council held twice a year and an elected committee with a treasurer, spokespersons and so on. For me, it was nearly unbelievable that we really succeeded to found this Federation in 1993. It was a big step forward.
The Federation was very successful in the last decade in building up the green movement in Europe as an accepted major political current on the same footing as socialism, conservatism and liberalism. The successful Global Green Meeting in Canberra was underlining this on a higher international level. In the next years, the political conditions of our work in Europe will change to a certain extent. The enlargement of the EU and the intensified debate on integration in the context of the decision on the European convention must be adequately addressed by developing the Federation into a real European Green Party without losing its pan-European character.
Our green values advocate a redefinition of the relationship between human beings and nature, ecological balance and human solidarity, as a result of new regulation of resource use and environmental impact, a democratization of the global economy, the protection of human rights, and a non-violent peace policy that are being challenged by the globalization process. The problem is becoming more and more that of translating them into practical reform steps for local, regional and national governments and the European Union. We have the common task to develop a coherent strategy that acts as a bridge leading from political visions and traditions of radical green “protest parties” to a reformist perspective of green “concept parties” that constitute a potential component of government coalitions.
