UNFORTUNATLY WE HAVE HAD TO POSTPONE THIS EVENT

We will inform you as soon as we have a new date.

On Sunday 9 May, Europe Day, the EGP Supporters’ Network invites all to an international public forum debate-plus-brainstorming on military intervention and civil alternatives for bringing freedom and democracy to other parts of the world. The event takes place in the Dutch border town of Maastricht, at a stone’s throw from a Nato airbase, where the Maastricht Treaty was signed.

The event is part of a project to boost European Green thinking on the issue, in which the Network cooperates closely with the European Green Party  and the Greens/EFA in the European parliament.

Panellists: (candidate )Members of the Dutch and European Parliament for GroenLinks (asked); Juliette  Boulet, member of the Belgian federal parliament for Écolo, and representatives of the regional ngo’s  Heerlen Peace Platform and Stop Awacs.

Venue: StayOkay, Maasboulevard 101, Maastricht, Netherlands; 14 – 17 h. Contact: Lin Tabak lin@ision.nl

Almost 250 thousand Europeans are members of a Green party. Yet only some 1.100 have registered as supporters of those parties’ European cooperation, the EGP, although the EGP supportership was created as far back as 2004.

Complications

The biggest hurdle is the registration system: supporters have to register through the party of their country of residence, and only a small minority of those parties have opened the possibilty or included it in their regulations.

The reason the option was chosen back in 2004 is, that it enables parties to refuse people they consider as risks. But if most parties still haven’t opened registration, they did so for other reasons: a lack of understanding of what the scheme is and how it should be implemented; lack of staff to administer it.

Online solution

To make life easier, the Supporters’ Network is preparing a direct online registration facility which takes away most administrative complications whilst leaving the parties’ right to say ‘no‘ untouched.
The main principles (click here for full proposal):

• Supporters register & pay online, throug a site administered by the Supporters’ Network.  Adv: no data transfer from  parties to EGP.

• Supporters create an online identity, as in Facebook. How much of it is visible to others, they decide for themselves. Adv.: no ‘privacy’ problems for parties or EGP.

• Payment goes directly to an EGP account. Adv: no interference with party-internal fee rules or national legislation for party financement.

• Registration gives direct access to the online Supporters community, so people can get in touch with others who share the same interests, or look for specific expertise, or geographical characteristics. Registration also gives access to Network forums.

The facility still has to be integrated into the EGP’s internal rules. For that purpose a resolution has been drafted, which will be voted during the council in Tallin (8-10 October 2010).

Next step: tell it all!

Although parties won’t have to bother about registration any longer, they still have a crucial role. European participation  only will be a success if parties

• advertise it widely, in their magazines and when sending an annual membership renewal request, by putting a registration button on their websites
• launch it officially during a suitable party event.
• put a registration button on their websites. Click here for the link.

The Network is happy to assist, we’ll shortly put online a presentation leaflet in several languages which you are welcome to use. And we’ll be happy to give a live presentation; mail to supportersnetwork@greenyourope.eu

That assessment is at the core of one of the Supporters’ Network’s new projects. Currently we are thinking of the best way to tackle the issue – here you find a draft proposal. However, we are -very much- interested in your feedback, which will be used as input for a workable agenda containing a background document, discussions, debates, opinion articles in the press and a final report that will be offered to our EGP board and the Green Group in the European Parliament. Do’nt hesitate to let us know what you miss, what emphasise you would prefer, what issues must be added, or left out – ehither by leaving a comment or by mailing to inti.suarez@gmail.com.

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.

Brussels – ‘The best way to do climate justice’, said Dutch climate researcher Frans Alkemade during a round table organised by the EGP grassroots network  in Brussels on 30 January, ‘is to avoid climate change.’ And the most efficient way to do that, is not, he added, put all your assets on ambitious CO2-reductions in Europe, but to offer China to sponsor cleaner charcoal technology.  It was one of the proposals to get the world out of the deadlock after the Climate non-summit. Surely the EU should keep its reduction ambitions high and offer substantial funds for helping the poorest countries to cope with climate change, the participants concluded, if it wants to get the initiative back and put pressure on the US. But additional strategies are called for, like a ‘coalition of the willing’ of the most ambitious states, damage control by industrialised countries sponsoring cleaner technologies in emerging economies and for develpoment countries an exemption from duties for intellectul property rights for climate technology.

Follow-up: specialists from party working groups will be invited to explore the above mentioned and other promising strategies. Read full report.