Twenty Years
of European Greens
1984 - 2004
edited by Arnold Cassola & Per Gahrton
Otto Ter Haar
De Groenen (Netherlands)
- EGC delegate in Majvik, Finland 1993
At the founding of the Federation in Majvik I didn’t have any clear expectations about the Federation. I didn’t expect much difference between the Federation and its predecessor, the Green Co-ordination. Since then I have seen that the Federation has grown quantitatively, at least during Congresses, but the influence of the Federation is still quite limited as it was at the time of the Green Co-ordination.
One of the points I was interested in after the founding of the Federation was the influence of the Guiding Principles that should be binding at the European level, according to article three of the statutes. This phrase was defended during a meeting in April 1992 in Amsterdam by Johan Hamels of Agalev and was accepted without debate. During the political discussions in the following Councils of the Federation I attended, rarely any reference was made to the Guiding Principles. Furthermore, while the statutes have been revised several times the Guiding Principles have never been put on the agenda for a revision until very recently. About the current practice of article three of the statutes of the Federation I can say without exaggeration that some parties do not seem to make any effort to adapt their foreign policy to the Guiding Principles of the Federation.
I expect that the Federation will be strengthened as soon as it will be recognised as a European Political Party according, I believe, to article 138 of the Maastricht Treaty (191 in the Amsterdam Treaty) and when the Federation will be directly subsidised by the European Union, according to precise and accountable financial rules, which were adopted earlier in 2003.
