This was the main theme of this Autumn’s EGP Council, taking place 12-14th October in Vienna. Co-spokesperson Philippe Lambert and Ulrike Lunacek welcomed the delegates representing the 34 national member parties in the same historic chamber of the Austrian Parliament which had already long before been populated by 32 parties representing 8 nations at the beginning of their long parliamentary emancipation process from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

climate change won’t be stolen from the Greens,

commented MEP Eva Lichtenberger from Austrian Tirol, underlining that other parties were still stepping back, in the interest of big business, from decisive action:”It’s just words, words, words – and very little action.” The Austrian Greens are campaigning for Energiewende 2020 , i.e.

an ambitious turn-around: 100 % renewable energy supply by 2020!

This is manageable, maintains their leader Alexander Van der Bellen, a Professor of Economics.:”As always, the first movers will have the advantage, and the last movers will be punished by the market. Let’s push our national governments in the EU to be the first!” Van der Bellen sees no real contradiction between

calling climate change the worst market failure ever,

and at the same time conceding that a solution to this failure cannot be found by ignoring market mechanisms. Where else, agreed Ralf Fücks of the Böll Foundation: if it is true we have not more than 10-15 years left for a turn-around avoiding catastrophic climate change, then we are bound to use market instruments.

“We cannot abolish private property, but we can try to generalize it”,

Fücks thinks, “for example by shifting taxation from labour to consumption of resources, and by introducing basic income for everybody, possibly together with civic work.” To this regard, Prof. Vandana Shiva, the award-winning environmental activist from India, recalled an old Women’s Lib slogan:

let those who’ve created the mess clear it up!

Referring to the emission trade system, Prof.Shiva criticised that “those who pollute the most are rewarded most” – a remark which prompted some other speakers into defending, for the sake of climate protection, the sheer efficiency (if not the morals and the current practice) of resorting to such market instruments. But then,

where does our economic vision still differ from others?

An answer to this core question comes from Czech Green Party leader and deputy Prime Minister responsible for the environment Martin Bursik: while the market economy does not count external costs, we advocate just that: an “internalisation of externalities”; a new concept of “environmental justice” with a -fiscally neutral- environmental tax reform, i.e.

strongly promoting innovation towards a low carbon economy:

everybody should pay the price according to the level of damage he causes: it’s not about more or less market, but about a more fair market, e.g. by strongly incentivating environmentally sound production and behaviour. In Vienna, the EGP Council listened (and politely applauded!) to big business too, (and viceversa!): Christian Jourquin, CEO of Solvay (a Belgium-born chemical and pharmaceutical group employing some 29.000 people in 50 countries), participated to a panel, trying “to bring back industry as part of the solution rather than the problem”, as he said:

don’t underestimate the triangle industry science and innovation.

If you think of your life expectancy, health, nutrition, quality of life, comfort, communication etc, you will concede industry can be extremely useful, as well as harmful, Solvay’s CEO went on: I know I am not going to convince you but we still might agree that

it is useful for the future of this planet if we listen to each other;

and that long-term global problems cannot be solved by people whose time horizon is restricted to days (like news media) or to months (like politicians standing for elections). Finally, and happily, Green Minister of Labour Tarja Cronberg, French Green MEP Martin Lipietz and Belgian Ecolo’s former Party Leader all pleaded

for a re-introduction of the concept of happiness into the economic debate,

with slogans such as: less lonelyness, more happiness; more time, less junk for the young and for the elderly; more service society, less consumer society; How right they were: the concept of happiness, essential though it is (and well-researched at that), is far too often absent from political debates in many countries – even among Greens, where it should in fact be most at home!

gs

Greens tend to react allergically -if not anarchically- everywhere, of course, to any attempt of concentrating power in too few, or even in just two hands. Quite rightly so, keeping in mind Europe’s 2Oth century history. 

But the most surprising case study to this regard is currently provided to all the rest of us Europeans by of the Greens of England and Wales: they are even more galvanized and polarized by the leadership question then the French.

“One world, one chance” was the official theme of the Green Party Autumn Conference in Liverpool. “One leader?” would in fact have been a more appropriate title. Because that was, and still is, the question most passionately debated among the party’s approx. 7.000 members. In November, they’ll hold an internal referendum to decide whether they want to continue with their present system, which is anti-hierarchical to an extent probably not seen anywhere else in Europe:

The English and Welsh Greens two so-called “principal speakers” whose duty is restricted to mainly serve their party rhetorically, but who have no voting rights on a party board of rather anonymous but relatively powerful “grey mice” whose decisions the “principal speakers” have to sell to the public.

This assures nobody ever dominates the scene, not visibly at least. Which is fine for the more traditionally-minded grass-root-Greens: we are not going now to become a party like all the others in Britain, another party of a leader maximo, with the rest of us just followers, are we? We have a long-standing commitment to non-hierarchical structures, to participatory politics. We don’t want to change our philosophy of debating ends rather than means, because in politics the latter always tend to replace the ends.

But this is a philosophy of “leaderlessness” and of “structurelessness” totally out today’s media-dominated world, argue the advocates of the referendum for “real leadership” and “proper accountability”, which they want to secure by having elected one or max. two leaders visibly in charge for at least two years. Because public opinion in post-Kremlin mediocracies does not really take notice, or pleasure in, invisible collective leadership, they say: we all need to know who’s in charge, who’s to be held accountable, and whose telephone number we have to ring up to know what the Greens of England and Wales really stand for.

It looks like this second stand might find a majority among the rank and file, especially among the younger ones. But it remains to be seen whether this majority will turn out to be larger than the two thirds which are required for a turn-around like this.

But to the observer from outside, not all is uncertain about this party so deeply divided in the run-up to the November referendum on the eternal leadership question. Whatever its result, it could and should bring about a clearer perception and visibility of Green priorities in England and Wales. A consensus solution could consist in cautiously moving towards a system of a co-leadership with limited powers but full accountability and visibility. This is just routine in the Green/EFA group in the European Parliament as well as in the European Green Party and in many of its member parties. So dear Greens of England and Wales, think twice before adapting to what other parties do, but if you opt for it, follow Europe’s best practices not England’s largest parties!

And you don’t necessarily need to change everything, only to discover that in fact you don’t have that much of a leadership problem after all: because if you ask around who is most credited as virtual party leader right now, the name of Green MEP Caroline Lucas is by far the most whispered-about…

Last not least, a compliment by this continental observer:

The quality of your debate is testimony to the persisting ethical and intellectual liveliness of the Green Party of England and Wales.

gs

Excellent idea, and practiced with success already, as we know: Czech MEP Milan Horocek was elected on the German Bündnis 90/Grüne list – and then strongly contributed to the Greening of the Czech Republic, with Martin Bursik becoming the first Green Minister in the East.

Of course, it was Daniel Cohn Bendit and Monica Frassoni, the two chairpersons of Greens/EFA in European Parliament, who set an example by successfully standing as E.P. candidates first in one country (France respectively Belgium), then in another (Germany resp. Italy).

For 2009 we should go a step further – and at the same time stay more firmly rooted on the ground. A realistic proposal could be to ask ALL our national EGP member parties to put at least one man and one woman (not necessarily VIP’s but persons with a credible special relationship to more than one -preferably neighbouring- country), on their national lists, not necessarily everywhere on the most prominent positions – but nonetheless conveying a strong message common to all EGP member parties:”.

A special sense of pan-European Green consensus, i.e. the message that MEPs and party leaders together with us individual national party members finally are on their way to forcefully and credibly present themselves, and our common themes, in 2009 with real panache as the most European and the most inspiring of all Parties:

THE border-crossing European Party as it presentend itself at the EGP founding congress in Rome, igniting the Green 2004 European election campaign. Slightly ante litteram, one might observe. Ma non è mai troppo tardi, to use a more recent Roman saying, it’s never too late (to put into practice what one has promised).

Thank you, Juan, if in striving for this objective you manage to keep European Greens at least one step ahead of all other Parties! With some help from Heerlen’s independent-minded idealists all over Europe you might just make it!

  Georg Schedereit

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.

Jean LAMBERT: No, I am not cautious on that. I think that’s very important, that people who feel they’ve a European identity, who want to work across borders, can express themselves as individual members of a EGP. That’s not to say they make all the decisions, but it’s to say they want to demonstrate an active engagement and to really be involved in creating a new European politics.

G.Sch: The EGP’s paper on „The future of Europe“ contains frequent criticism of what appears as a deficit of democracy in the EU’s institutional life. But has this supposedly first real European Party herself really come to life yet, or is it still rather just one more of those good old European federations of many national parties?

Jean LAMBERT: I think it’s important that Greens find a way to practice what they preach, about democracy, about involvement. And also that when you are making decisions you consult with the people who are going to be affected by your decisions, and obviously as party members of Green Parties, we ARE affected by the decisions our party leadership takes at the international level. So we need to be consulted, we need to be part of that decision-making process. If what we are really creating is a Green politics which has depth, not just an identity on a poster, but which has a living reality that we feel part of as Green members, than you realize why it’s important to really begin to develop this individual membership.

G.Sch: Without such a drive towards individual membership, what would be lost in your view?

Jean LAMBERT: I suppose the spirit of the Greens which comes from the grass-roots up to the center. Yes, leadership IS important. But it’s also important to involve those who are implicated in that leadership. For me as a Green MEP it is important to give a depth to Green politics, to really make it live as a reality throughout Europe, with a European dimension, not simply through our national party boards. We don’t think this is the way it should happen for the EU. I don’t think it’s the way it should happen for our party.

(verbatim transcript of an interview recorded on dvd at The Herleen Group’s fringe meeting on individual supportership at the 2nd EGP Congress Geneva on the 13th October 2006)