EGP Congress – European spirit impresses French media

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If the 4^th European Greens’ congress will be remembered in France, it is because of the most pro-European speech ever delivered by a presidential candidate, Norwegian-born Green MEP Eva Joly. And if it makes Green history, that is because, probably for the first time ever, a leading newspaper has highlighted the European Greens as an autonomous political entity.

Si le Congrès le 4 Verts européens restera dans la mémoire française, c’est à cause du discours le plus pro-européen jamais délivré par un candidat à la présidence, l’eurodéputée verte d’origine norvégienne Eva Joly. Et si elle passera dans l’histoire verte, c’est parce que, probablement pour la première fois, un grand journal a mis en avant le Parti Vert Européen comme une entité politique autonome.

The event in the stately Maison de la Chimie, attended by more than 700 Greens from well over 40 countries, was somewhat dominated by domestic affairs: the ongoing negotiations between the French Social Democrats and Greens about seats in the next Parliament, and in particular by the difference about a nuclear phase-out.

380.000 Jobs

But Rebecca Harms, co-chair of the Greens in the European Parliament, seized the presence of the country’s leading media to tell the French that she – and many other Germans – “don’t understand why the social democrats (PS) cling to an energy source, the mere announcement of the passing out of which in Germany has enabled the creation of “380.000 new jobs” in renewable energies. If necessary, she added, we’d mobilise our trade unionists to make François Hollande, the social democrat’s candidate, move.

After this link with the headlines, Joly had little trouble passing her European message. To drag Europe out of the crisis, she proposed in the free daily ’20 minutes’, a four-step plan: the creation of «a European industrial pole» because «investments, not an accumulation of austerity plans» are needed; an « Ecological and social solidarity pact », which will enable «a genuine employment and inequality reduction policy’; the « pooling of debts and the creation of a European treasury», and the « lifting of bank secrecy and tax havens».

Federal Europe

In L’Humanité she unfolded the proposition elaborated within the Green Group in the European Parliament, for a « federal Europe » capable of conducting a common economic policy, to which nation states should pass part of their sovereignty. The communist paper even gave her the space for her recipe how to establish it, starting with a new constitutional process and ending with a European referendum, so « the peoples who would refuse it, would leave a community which they reject».
Esperantists

Many other media printed the European message on this relatively quiet November weekend. Only one, Le Monde, dug deeper and portrayed the European Green Party that provided the background for Joly’s speech. In a flowery report it describes a congregation that has shed off all traces of neo-hippyness, and has not yet merged into mediocrity – as is proven by an Esperantists’ stand at the venue and a list of the best gay bars in the options for a night out. A congregation that rapidly evolves from a can of competing national worms to an European entity acting on the political scene, not in the least because of the new energy provided by the newly established French-German complicity.

Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez

Until recently, Le Monde quotes Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez, member of the EGP executive and campaign coordinator of Eva Joly, “the Germans saw us as slightly backward leftists ». And the French, could be added, saw the Germans as power-thirsty conformists and the EGP as the battle ground to fight them, not the source of energy and support it is now. Or, as Sitbon-Gomez says, « Eva isn’t a lonely adventure but an itinerary that can be seen all over Europe ».