We discussed European democracy too, as might be expected from an European party: about closer cooperation, to be presice. Over 40 very different parties, some minuscule, others in government, some nearly mainstream, and others deep red-green, peacefully amended their way trough a 70 pages-long document. But this small victory of the common good over single party interests was overshadowed by the reality outside the conference venue on the Danube banks. That Hungarian reality, which entered our Green scene at several moments, proves that the worst nightmare of dedicated democrats is far from imaginary: democracy here is about to be abolished by democratic means.

The People

Nationalist populists are on the rise everywhere, parties that claim, in the name of ‘the people’, a return to good-old safety within the country confines, a world in which immigrants or European cooperation have no place, a safety that probably never was very good but for which many people vote. Some of those parties are close to power, like the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid, or have it already, like Berlusconi’s Il Popolo della Libertà. But in only one country they have an absolute majority: in Hungary, where Victor Orbán’s Fidesz occupies so many seats in Parliament – 262 out of 386 – that it can just ignore adverse opinions.

And Victor Orbán is using that power. His heavily criticized media law, issued last Summer, imposes heavy fines on all media judged guilty of ‘inciting to hatred or social exclusion directed against the majority’, very vague definitions, as the EU Observer comments, of which a government-appointed authority consisting entirely of Fidesz-people is the sole judge.

Glorious past

Orbán now is pulling the strings everywhere. After having shipped critical party members to the European Parliament, he started to appoint loyal supporters at the head of the Accounting Office, the Office of the Chief Prosecutors, and the Office of the Chief Justice, whilst stripping the Constitutional Court of part of its powers. Recently he launched a new draft constitution, which puts Fidesz values – God, the Family, and the glorious Hungarian past and future at its core and, Eva Balogh comments in Atlantic Sentinel, changes the rules to keep keep Fidesz in power for at least another 12 years.

Security

When arriving in sunlit Budapest, whose streets were crowded with girls in shorts and football acrobats, I had difficulty imagining what such changes actually mean in everyday life. When the issue was being addressed, during the opening panel organised by the Green Group in the European Parliament, that feeling hardly changed. The organizers had put safety standards in place because Dany Cohn-Bendit, chair of the group, had received threats because he had criticized Orbán. But if security for international flights would be as watchful as the lot that let us through, the world probably would have seen a lot more 9-11’s.

From left to right: Miklósz Harazti, Dani Cohn-Bendit, István Elek, Flóra Hevesi (moderator)

Brussels Bashing

What was said during the debate didn’t help much either. Surely it is scary, this new wave of Brussels/Strasburg bashing led by a government that makes people believe that the EU does to them what Moscow did before, without mentioning that, as media freedom expert Miklós Harazti pointed out, ‘Brussels belongs to us and Moscow didn’t’.

Surely it is discomforting when you are told that ‘the notion of solidarity’ has disappeared’ and that ‘of fair competition between parties as an essential condition for democracy’ as well, as István Elek, a journalist and member of Parliament for the Green party LMP made clear. But no adverse opinions had been invited, as is often the case during European Green events, which means that those speeches had a high degree of ‘Last warnings from Green Paradise’.

Allegations

But during the press conference the following day, when which a few representatives of local mainstream media had joined the band of critical Budapest based international journalists, that feeling disappeared. HírTV confronted Cohn-Bendit with the allegation that is very popular with his adversaries: that of paedophilia, based on a book quotation from 1975. And a colleague from a national daily asked how Cohn-Bendit could, as a non-Hungarian, criticize a constitution proposal that is an internal affair, and ‘exactly reflects how a majority of Hungarians wants to live.’

Cohn-Bendit had his answers ready. I abandoned this position long ago, he replied the first, whereas ‘the extreme right sticks to old positions.’ A constitution isn’t a life-style manual, he told the second, but ‘provides the rules for a system (…) in which both majorities and minorities can exist.’ The paedophilia allegation has been repeated again and again, some papers even accusing Cohn-Bendit of having avoided to answer. The constitutional criticism only was published by one or two quality blogs.

Jobbik youth

Meanwhile, a huge part of Hungarian society supports the new deal. We got a taste of that during the traditional council party in town, which was rudely interrupted by a bunch of boisterous students, who pushed the band from the podium and us Greens from the dancing floor. Big beer mugs in hands, they had a look about them that was very different from ours. They are great fans of Orban’s putting the EU on a distance, we found out when talking to them. They are, I found out later, quite close to Jobbik, Fidesz’ extreme right little sister that won 47 seats in Parliament, 31 more than LMP. And they seemed not in the least worried about the press muzzle and other threats to democracy.

Bernadett Szel

Pro-Fidesz managers

How does this new media law work out, I wondered, being a professional journalist myself. After the law had been announced, a radio speaker who responded with one minute of silence, had been fired. But I haven’t had many echoes since. So I asked Bernadett Szel, spokesperson of LMP. ‘It is a gradual process’, she said. ‘We still can get critical analyses published – in some of the newspapers. But the directors of the main radio and TV stations already have been replaced by pro-Fidesz managers. Owners of the big media are taking fewer and fewer risks. And journalists follow, getting afraid to write. Just like scientists, who get more hesitant to giving critical comments. They all are afraid to lose their jobs.’

Constitution

Which is a serious handicap in the debate about the new constitution. If one can call it a debate. The government is determined to push the document, released on March 9, trough Parliament next week. The social democrats and LMP have pulled out of the debate, because their comments hadn’t been taken seriously, so only Fidesz and Jobbik still participate. If it is adopted, that constitution can be changed by a 2/3 majority against 4/5 now, and Fidesz can freely neck democratic rights.

To turn the tide then will be even more difficult than it is now. ‘Needed is a civic awakening’, Miklós Harazti said during the Green Group debate. But the awakening he has in mind, the awakening that in the Arab countries pushed the under 25’s to reclaim the streets and demand freedom and democracy, seems far away. ‘Our society is relatively old’, Bernadett Szel explained. ‘Since the 80’s the fertility rate has been going down’, adding ‘in a cheerful society it is much higher.’ István Elek used even stronger words. ‘To create a new culture will be a long and difficult process’, he said, ‘because our society is ageing, worn, bled out. ‘

Arab Spring

Does that sound fatalistic? ‘If you would have told in Egypt thatEgypt that Mubarak would be gone soon last December, no-one would have believed you either’, said Cohn-Bendit. But there is one difference. Hungarian society already has seen two ‘Arab springs’ in recent history, the first in 1956, triggered by a students’ march against the Soviet-imposed People’s Republic, and the second in 1989, after the Iron curtain had dropped. One of the new leaders born out of the latter is called Victor Orbán.

Yet another morning, and sitting in the plenary conference room of the 14 Council Meeting of the European Green Party, I am seeing how the voting on the document “Fit for the Future” goes. The fogs of the early morning are actually gone, and through the windows the light of the sun, reflected I the Danube, flows in. So, as one of the chairpersons said; we are fit for voting.

Which as usual, is a statement to be taken with a grain of salt. Since, just as yesterday and in previous sessions along the past year, we are already ten minutes in a discussion to choose between the words agenda, or program, or platform… To describe what the european green party is doing to “live up to our goals”. A rather silly discussion if you ask me. Or if you ask me before I started this business of being involved in writing manifestos for political parties. The thing is that even in this wording discussion, the issue that comes to the front is the relation of national power facing european power, say it otherwise: Should a european (green) party dare to define a political program (that might be somehow forced upon national parties) or should the europeans limit themselves to draw an agenda of shared issues? Perhaps this is why european politics sounds very boring to the outer world, and actually is exciting. The form of the discussion is formalistic and seems to be only about words. But actually, what we are really discussing, is the distribution of political power in a complex reality. The word “agenda” carried the day, by the way.

And with these, and some other comparable discussions and voting, this session came to the one and only issue that have long term consequences. The European Green Party granted, few years ago, the status of observer to an organization called European Network of Seniors. Organization which aims to integrate members defined by their age, in opposition to their nationalities. Today this organization is arguing for having voting rights, to become in facto comparable to national parties. Which will imply that the structure of a party made of national parties would be, somehow, undermined. The European Green Party would not be a simple collection of national parties, but something else… whatever else might be. And I say would. Because just right now, as I write, the voting went 75 to 3, deciding that the Seniors would not be granted special voting rights. We Greens, at least in Budapest, remain safely in our comfort zone of being an organization made out of national parties..

And in these note of consensus and comfort, the rest of the morning went on, opening the space for the next sessions, now on concrete issues. One can always hope that this -very political- using meeting time to agree on structures will not happen anytime soon.

And perhaps this sort of migration is what has happened with the nuclear energy discussion, if we come to think about it. Because the world was awaken to the nightmare of nuclear power in Japan, and today, in a moment when we greens where seeing a second wave, a renaissance of nuclear power, it comes to Japan again the dubious honor of remind us what are we facing. So Rebecca Harms opened this session of the Council of the Green European Party with the words: “It never felt so bad to be right”

Ada Amon, director of the NGO Energia Klub followed up this statement, sketching briefly the history of errors and mistakes that the nuclear industry has been making in Hungary. In her words: our history and Fukushima must change the nuclear discussion: it is not about economics, it is about security. That view, expressed in some detail, was followed by a talk from Peter Olajos, Hungarian State Secretary for Green Energy and Climate Change. He reminded us that Hungary heavily depends on foreign energy, mostly coming from Russia, so there is a broad societal support for the development of own nuclear energy programs. So he thinks that the discussion in the coming years will be healthily influenced by Fukushima. The hungarian government intends to create 20000 jobs for 2020, and Fukushima will somehow support this development. Following came Benedek Javor, speaker of the local hungarian greens for sustainable development. The reasons for the LMP party, hungarian greens, to be against nuclear energy is not only the known green arguments, but also the fact that nuclear is expensive and centralized, which is bad for a small market as the Hungarian. His is a position that does not forget the traditional line of green argumentation, but adds some economical elements to it.

What I am still missing in this line of discussions, actually, is the human and political dimension, that space where Fukushima might be changing the debate. For the speakers this is a fact of life, perhaps for being too long part of green movements (as myself, actually) but still. The question is if this tragedy would really affect the public opinion as other tragedies have done. When Chernobyl happened, the Soviet Union was crumbling, and the massive european demonstrations against nuclear warheads were not too far away in the past. You could say that there was a political atmosphere willing to embrace the anti-nuclear argument. Do we have that cauldrom of opinion today? For a political party it is important to think about the trends of rethinking (or not) the nuclear discussion. We greens are moving from our traditional arguments towards a more ecnomical view of the issue. But is this enough to connect with our potential base, our electoral base if you prefer?

Funnily enough, meanwhile I was typing the last sentences came Bas Eickhout to the word, attempting to give a overview of the european discussion. Ok, a chance for tackling the more political view. Bas offered a vision on ur green discussion, starting by explaining that the window of opportunity for the nuclear industry to being reborn is actually short, ten years at most. In the eyes of Bas, in about ten years renewable power will overrun the share of energy of nuclear power… And then nuclear will be out of the game. So for us greens, at least according to Bas, should shift the center of the debate: the governments and the lobbyists are the ones that have to explain why should we go now into nuclear. We do not have to explain anymore why are we against. Let the brunt of proof to fall in the other side, for once. That being said, Bas went on to explain that the issues that have to be addressed are two: energy efficiency and renewable infrastructure.

Meanwhile I still wondered if this line of argument is going to lead us somewhere else than where we are, Monica Frassoni made her points, also on the political side of the discussion. As it is known, referenda against nuclear power have been proposed in several countries. Monica does not know if national referenda against nuclear are actually better than a european one (as some greens will formally propose later today in this conference), but still: for Frassoni it is the task of the greens to add a european dimension to this debate. Nuclear energy is not about the fate of a country, but about the fate of the continent.

The panel having spoken, the word was given to the public. The first was a representative of the Austrian Greens, whom placed the debate in the broad light of ethical debate: nuclear energy is not only about economics and security. It is also about ethics. And again, about costs. Lambert (MEP) predicted the increase of costs for nuclear, because security regulation must (and will) increase. Kramer (also MEP) pointed out that Germany has increased the share of renewables faster than predicted. This is our model to follow.

And in this way the first debate of today came to an end. As a matter of fact, I have mixed feelings. Tragedies have a way to infiltrate the public mind that is, at least to my mind, hard to predict. We greens have build our political capital on our opposition too nuclear power, and the current Fukushima disaster, still going on, will certainly define our arguments. But will it be enough? Short window of opportunity or not, the nuclear lobby has gained, in the last years, the support of prominent greens, as Monbiot in England, and Lovelock in the USA. These people is not going to change their mind because of Fukushima. Will we be able to win this debate? If we are to believe the speakers today, we will. I myself think that we will  indeed. But how, is still a question unanswered.

To do justice to its citizens and to strengthen their involvement in the  Union, the EU should introduce European election lists, writes a former leader from the Newropeans, now member of the Dutch Green Party GroenLinks. The EGP, he says, should plead for those  loud and clear.

My first reaction: the future of the EGP can only be a transformation into a real European party, a party whose representatives can be elected by all citizens with voting rights in the EU.

To achieve this goal, I have been pleading (already when I still was with the Newropeans) for a European electoral law and European voting lists. I think it is extremely important that we make this step, also in the light of the rise of populism in Europe, not so much to turn Europe into a federal construction – which I believe is a means, not a goal in itself – but to strengthen the involvement of citizens in the EU.

Therefore I would welcome the EGP to plead openly in favour of such an electoral law. Perhaps it already does so now, but without crying it in the streets.

It might be doing so already, but without making these efforts sufficiently known. A non-political way to achieve such a law, or at least European lists for the forthcoming European elections, to start a procedure before the European court.

The starting point would be, that we citizens of Europe have no voice in the EU and that the existing legislation contains an inequality: the voice of a citizen in a smaller country weighs more than the  voice of a citizen from a bigger member state… I’d like to commit myself to this goal in the years to come. Would it get any support within the EGP?

The Supporters’ network participates in one of the most ambitious projects of the European Green Party: the design of the structural outlines of its own future. Hereby the network invites all EGP supporters  – and others who’d like to – to contribute from a grassroots’ point of view. There have been rumours of a reward for the most promising reaction, so don’t hesitate. Contributions can be posted in the comments box or sent to lynn@greenyourope.eu. They will be included in the Supporter’ Networks’ contribution to the future project. Deadline: 7 November. We’ll keep you informed about the results.

To give you ‘food for thought’, here are the contributions we received – you can comment on each of them separately.

1. EGP: past and present
2. Political Future of the European Green Party - by Inti Suarez
3. A Party of People - by Lin Tabak
4. The Next European Green Party - by Inti Suarez
5. A European Super Party? No thanks – by John from York
6. Go for European Lists - by Arno (former Newyouropean turned Green)