GroenLinks: highest membership rate

Utrecht – With 24.241 members on June 1st, the Dutch Green party GroenLinks attained its highest membership ever after an increase of 3.400 in the past five months. The party, the EGP’s second largest in membership, now has more than half as many members as Bündnis 90/Die Grünen – in a country that has just over one fifth the population of Germany.

According to chair Henk Nijhof the increase is due to the party’s strong position in the election campaign. One week before the national elections of June 9, the polls predicted 11 seats (in a parliament of 150), which equals the parties’ highest number ever, from 1998 to 2002.

The party is not the countries’ largest in membership, however; six parties had more members on January 1st, and an eighth, D66, was catching up rapidly.

With 926 last December GroenLinks also has the highest number of EGP supporters. It is the second EGP party, after the Norwegian Greens, to have agreed to the new online registration system. Which party’s next?