Lessons from (and for) Les Verts’ Jours d’Eté

Let’s face it: climate protection is not a Green “unique selling proposition” any more. Let’s be proud of it! Because the fact that by now everybody is talking climate is to a great extent due to years and years of Green climate protection campaigns.

We don’t like to play the eternal perfect Cassandra. But we can’t help feeling flattered looking on all those late-comers behind us suddenly converted(?)  to our most important and impellent cause.  

But this also means that from now on it just won’t suffice to DENOUNCE a (self-)destructive unequal etc. economy. This just won’t be good enough for Greens all over Europe, to win back youngsters and to finally take off among Eastern and Southern European electorates who are still being distracted from ecological causes by more seemingly “down-to-earth” needs.

“Resister, c’est  créer – créer, c’est resister” – this was the very French motto of the Les Verts 2007 biggest Summer Event, the “Jours d’Eté” with more than 1200 participants in Kemper-Quimper(Brittany). 

CREATIVENESS and PRAGMATISM: don’t renounce to good old Green and gauchiste essentials, but leave behind insider’s infighting (politique politicienne) and get prepared for new scenarios and possibly new partnerships not only with the rest of the left but also with lib-labs and conservatives (as is already the case in 4 of the 5 EU countries where Greens are in government!).

These were some of the messages delivered and discussed in Kemper-Quimper, e.g. by Dany Cohn-Bendit, the Greens-EFA Group Co-Leader in the European Parliament and the European Greens’ (EGP) Secretary General Juan Behrend.