Green Works – on 3 March

Is the Green New Deal just an elections slogan? Forget it! in the southern Dutch town of Breda, a local energy company–cum-housing project will see the light, which entirely relies on local energy sources like bio-fuels from the surrounding woodlands. It is part of a programme consisting of more than 50 action plans. And Breda is no exception, was the message of Breda’s Green alderman Wilbert Willems during Heerlen 8 ( on 30 January in Brussels): over a hundred local Green administrators have pooled their practice to tell the Dutch voters during the campaign for the local elections on 3 March, that on the local level ‘Green Works!’ (Groen Werkt!, as the Dutch say).

The  Greens’ answer to climate, economy and other crises and the key theme in the common European campaign, hasn’t only inspired the Dutch Greens. At least 12 parties have made their own versions – varying from election pamphlets proposing Green jobs, to elaborate programmes covering almost the whole spectre of political ecology.

The Green European Foundation will shortly issue areport that compares them. A glimpse of that was revealed during Heerlen 8, by researcher Edgar Szolc. Some plans, he said, are elaborate as books, others stronger in rhetoric than in practical measures, especially when talking about local change. The GroenLinks approach apparently is an exception. Read report.