May we present: Fédécolos

Since just about a year, GreenYourope has a French sister. She is called Fédécolos,  which is not very far from GreenYourope, and strives for a federal Europe that isn’t far from the Europe of citizens the EGP supporters’ network want to build.

Its spiritual father is Gael Lancelot, a convinced European having studied and worked in both England and France, who joined Europe Écologie ‘because it was the only party talking about Europe’ during the European elections of 2009.

When Europe Écologie, an initiative of civil society actors, merged with Les Verts, France’s Green party, into Europe Écologie – Les Verts (EELV) on November 14, 2010, he asked Dany Cohn-Bendit, co-initiator of EELV, if launching a federal movement within the new party would be a good idea.

It is indeed, Cohn-Bendit replied, and you’ll be coordinating it.

Apparently, Lancelot wasn’t the only one to taken ‘Europe’ in EELV literally; the network now counts some 150 members, both on Facebook and on a very active discussion list. But Fédécolos doesn’t only exchange and discuss news and background articles on European change, it also acts. It challenged all EELV candidate candidates to the presidential elections with a set of questions and obtained quite interesting results.

It was less successful when challenging the party apparatus. A motion/resolution for both EELV and the European Greens, asking the parties to lobby for a federal assembly for Europe, wasn’t put on either of the agendas; in the case of EELV there was a very vague procedural excuse, in the case of the EGP the committee said that the member parties hadn’t discussed the issue yet.

Read more on Google Groups, and the group’s documents page.