The surprise came from the character of both workshops. Workshops as usual are a moment to build on a paper that has been previously drafted. Or it could be a moment to explore relevant ideological differences, in order to wrote a reasonably consensual draft of a document after. Now, this was not the case.

Few minutes after starting the workshop on North-South collaboration, guided by Elisabeth Meuleman (@elisameuleman), actually, the coordinator has nothing more to say, and the word was given to the public. And few minutes after the migration workshop started, we the attendants were thinking in possible campaigns to illustrate our viewpoints on migration. You could call these two workshops, (a novelty in my experience of the EGP) “do-workshops”, workshops in which actually you are not anymore public, but actually must participate.

The reason that this came to happen in the North South collaboration workshop is that it was actually a follow up on a decision that the two green belgium political parties have taken. Both Ecolo and Groen have decided to allocate (and manage) 1% of their budget into international cooperation projects. And yesterday we were asked: what should we do? Should we expand this idea? Should we coordinate it in Brussels, or in each country? What should we do with the money? What criteria can we set for taking projects in? All interesting, and non trivial questions… Triggered by a decision that I strongly believe every other green party should follow.

In the case of migration, one of the most contentious issues in the european politics, Ska Keller (@skakeller, workgroup coordinator) decided early on to collect campaign ideas on consensual issues, rather than disagreements. So we had an exchange on what is actually going on in our own countries and a good moment to reflect on what have we done ourselves and how much of it makes sense in the european context.

If you ask me, that is what workshops in a congress should be.  

Talking in the gangways with some new Irish friends, here in the spring council of the European Green Party in Copenhagen, we got to talk about political power. My interlocutor, a lawyer that has become active in the Irish Green Party recently, told us what her husband said when she join the greens: “well, you can’t be accused of doing it because of the money nor because of the glory”.

And that was actually the issue of a very inspiring talk yesterday. In a plenary session we heard two ministers of environment, from Finland and from Denmark. They talked about what greens actually do, once in government. In particular, the danish environment minister, Ida Auken, addressed the relation of the greens with power. And she was great. I don’t believe that anybody hearing her would ever doubt again about taking part in government. Ida manage to dispel that almost freudian dilemma from many greens, which seems to want, and not to want, to assume power. To quote her: “don’t ever ever ever think that you can do more in opposition than in government’ Actually, you should stop reading this lines of me, jump to twitter and search for her name, since you will come across many quotes from her speech yesterday. Let’s not repeat here her plea. Just go to twitter and find it.

What I do want to talk about here, is about a little piece of her speech. It turns out that Ida, even coming from a politically active family, went through a moment in which she did not want to have kids and saw our future as bleak and hopeless. But in one way or another, she did stand up, started a political career, and eventually she did take the risk of participating in government. And her message today is clear, and inspiring. Go and take your chances! And actually this is it. Because politics might be, up to a point, about having the right answer to the present question. Of course we greens believe that we know how to deal with the current crisis. But actually, politics is not that at all. Politics is actually a jump in the void, a bet. A bet that if we get into it, it will be work out. Actually many of us do not take this jump at all. Many of us prefer, or decide, to stay in our little comfort zones, criticizing from our outside position, instead of taking the risk of compromise and take -some- power. And yesterday we have a window into a person that risked it, and it work out.

Inspiring, that is.

Let it be said that these kind of sessions are quintessential in the councils of the EGP. Or so you would think when looking at the formal agenda of every council, normally dominated by many similar “working paper” sessions. The idea, a very european one, is that sessions in a council are the culmination of a long consultation and discussion process, where different and contrasting views have been made -sometimes painfully- to coincide and fit in a shared document. As a matter of fact these sessions are quite relaxed and not so crucial, since attendants know each other, and are likely to have already explored their differences and leaving the ones that are unbridgeable behind. Still, given the all present need of greens to argue with each other, these sessions open a rare window in the most interesting dilemmas of the green movement.

And so it was this time.

One of the most interesting dilemma of the greens is our connection with the european project. Because today the day there are very few greens that would believe in europe as a problem. You could say that euro-skepticism is not a very green thing. Today we believe that europe is a big part of the solution to almost any problem in an european country. And at the same time we surely recognize the shortcomings of the project as it is right now. Greens are constantly being concern with that famous democratic gap of the EU. We constantly harp on the commission and her unelected powers to be. And still, we think that the EU is the way to go. I can see it in the faces of my fellow congress goers. We are actually happy to be here, to feel ourselves europeans. Funny thing. Because the very abstract and almost non existent thing of being european inspires us, meanwhile we criticize the very concrete and real european institutions. Ours is a very interesting spagaat, also to be seen in the document being perfected.

Looking in detail at the text, and the discussions that this session was still dealing with, you could see that for almost every single sentence that would explain that the EU is the institution capable of implementing  our most treasured ideas, few lines before or few lines after, there would be a sentence explaining yet another wrong thing that the EU is right now.

Of course, it feels ok. Because when we greens get to think about this issue, that is exactly how we feel. Our texts are likely to be the most honest texts that political parties today write. They reflect our doubts and our dilemmas. But right now, when I am hearing the environmental minister of Denmark, a green, extolling us to show the right way instead of criticizing the wrong one, I wonder if we should not leave our dilemmas for a while, and focus in bringing out our agreements. This council is still beginning, and the final vote on our vision for the future of the EU will be the Sunday. We’ll see how far are we then.

But this year we miss one.

It is hard to think about the Individual Supporters Network without thinking in Lin Tabak. Lin has been the constant motor of this initiative going back to 2002, when we didn’t even call ourselves Individual Supporters Network, but Herleen Group. Travelling to Copenhagen, actually, I was looking forward to meet her and yes, to catch up. And now that Lin is not around, that is detained in Amsterdam with other priorities at the moment, she is very much missed.

So here in between different reports on interesting discussions and complicated texts, let it recognize for a moment that we are missing Lin, right here and right now. Where are you Lin?

In their national congress on Friday 20th of April in Tel-Aviv, the Israeli Green movement (‘Hatnu’a Hayeruka’ in Hebrew) officially accepted the agreement recently achieved with different Green representatives at the local level.
The united party will run together for the next parliamentary elections in Israel, to take place end 2012 or beginning of 2013, and the next local elections in end 2013. During this historical meeting in Tel-Aviv the agreement was largely accepted by the party’s members, putting an end to a long process of coordination and negotiations between national and local levels.
The Israeli Green Movement was founded on 2008, shortly before the 2009 national elections, in which it obtained almost 30,000 votes but no seats in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. Until now, the party existed at national level only, and had only very few representatives at local level, in the city councils of Tel-Aviv and Haifa. However, following this union, the party has representatives in 20 city councils all over Israel.

Preparing for national and local elections
With this historical union, the Israeli Green movement prepares itself both for the next parliamentary elections and local elections, to have an effective national coordination of the local Green lists and initiatives. The main challenge of the Israeli Greens, as Greens everywhere, is how to translate the growing awareness to green issues from civil society to political power, local assemblies and national parliament and government. Although many Israeli citizens care very much for green issues such as the protection of the environment, public transport, biodiversity, green energy or sustainable urbanism, they do not necessarily aware of the Green alternative in Israeli politics. The union of Greens at national and local levels should effectively empower both levels, enabling the movement to have a coherent message and a clear voice for the Israeli public, gaining credibility and political power.