Almost 250 thousand Europeans are members of a Green party. Yet only some 1.00 have registered as EGP supporters. The biggest hurdle are the administrative complications; quite a few parties hesitate because they dont know how to handle them, don’t have the capacity to do so, or hardly have heard of the supportership scheme.  TO make life easier for them, the Supporters’ Network is preparing a direct registration facility through the Internet, which leaves the right of parties to block individuals they consider as a risk untoched, but takes away all administrative implications.

We have prepared a draft resolution and technical implementation plan which we will, profiting from your comments, will turn into a resolution for the Autumn council. If agreed, a logical next step will be that parties advertise the option, through short texts in party newsletters and mailings to members, and links and buttons on the party website. We are working on ready to use ones as well. And we’ll be offering all parties live presence during party events, organised together with party members.

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.

Brussels, 31 January – If Écolo and Groen! have their way, said Annemie Maes, chair of Groen! in the Brussels regional  parliament during the opening session of Heerlen 8, the annual meeting of European Green Grassroots, Brussels will soon be a shining example of Green Europeanism.  The Welsh and Flemish Green parties, represented in the regional government with three ministers, are the only ones cooperating across the language border that splits both capital and country in two. And they are determined to make Brussels ‘the ecological capital of Europe’ and ‘a real European capital for all the people who live there, not only  for those  speaking French or Dutch’. (report by Peter Alberts, Ge).