The gathering of hundreds of European Green activists at the EGP Council proved to be another great opportunity to promote GEF’s work among a key audience. As well as organising a series of workshops, GEF also promoted some of its most recent publications and met with many of its project partners to advance its 2012 work programme.

On the Friday of the Council meeting, GEF organised workshops on the European Citizens’ Initiative and EU energy policy. The ECI has been a core part of GEF’s work in recent years, with the Pocket Guide to the ECI published last month to coincide with the coming into force of the instrument. The workshop, which included several ECI organisers (Polina Hristova from ‘Fraternité2020′ and Klaus Kastenhofer from ‘My voice against nuclear power’), discussed the challenges the instrument faces in achieving its mission of creating a direct participation platform of citizens in EU politics. It was also an opportunity for Greens to discuss how the ECI can be used to advance green issues such as renewable energy and civil rights, with Bruno Kaufman MEP giving his perspective on this aspect.

The energy workshop discussed the state of EU energy policy one year after Fukushima. The speakers included energy efficiency directive rapporteur Claude Turmes MEP, as well as other leading experts in this policy area such as Grzegorz Wisniewski, Director of the Polish Institute for Renewable Energy and Anne Grete Holmsgaard, Director of the Danish NGO BioRefining Alliance. The meeting considered how to overcome the objections of certain Member States to more ambitious energy targets, as well as the threat to renewables posed by Shale Gas. The workshop was a continuation of GEF’s work in this area, which in 2011 saw a series of discussions organised by GEF across Europe on the European Commission’s Energy Roadmap 2050. A dossier on this topic, including reports from these events, is available on the GEF website.

On the Saturday of the Council meeting, GEF organised a discussion on the Greens’ response to the austerity agenda. Speakers included EGP Co-chair Philippe Lambert, Spanish Green MP Laia Ortiz Castellvi and editor of the Dutch Green Journal De Helling Erica Meijers. The discussion covered a number of aspects, which included whether the greens need to portray themselves as ‘fiscally responsible’ and what reforms are needed at European level.

The workshop on austerity coincided with the publication of the 2nd edition of the Green European Journal, which is dedicated to the issue of austerity. Titled ‘Surviving Austerity’, a range of articles consider how the Green movement and Europe can both emerge stronger from the economic crisis, and how the Green movement can articulate an alternative narrative during this time.

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Ireland is heading to the polls at the end of the month, as the only country of the 25 signatories that will be having a referendum on the European Fiscal Stability Treaty. Referenda on European issues are something of an Irish tradition at this stage, as their constitution means that they have voted on every one since Maastricht, and the debates can sometimes become controversial. In 2004 Ireland rejected the Treaty of Nice and in 2009, the Lisbon Treaty. Despite having some of the highest levels of enthusiasm about their membership of the Union, referendum campaigns have a special way of raising the political temperature in the country, and exposing previously unseen political fault lines. The campaign on the Fiscal Stability Treaty is no exception, and the Irish Green Party is focusing on the debate in advance of their party convention in the historic city of Kilkenny next week.

Former Senator and Irish Green Party chairman Dan Boyle was at EGP Spring Council this week to talk at GEF’s ‘Surviving Austerity, the Green Response’, where he spoke about the damaging effects that ECB policy is having on the political attitude towards the EU in Ireland. He has also written an article for the Green European Journal on the same topic, in which he lays out his insights of Ireland’s place in Europe since the end of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy.

Irish Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has also been considering the issue this week, in two blog pieces on the Green Party’s page about the way forward for Europe. To commemorate Europe Day, he considered the state of the Union, and Ireland’s place in it, hoping that we can avoid the international tensions that predate European integration. Another article considers the new prospects for a growth aspect to the European recovery after the election of François Hollande, something that the Irish have been seeking since the crisis began. But what shape should that growth exactly take?

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The European Green Party has strongly condemned declarations by Commission President Barroso suggesting Greece should ‘obey or get off the euro-train’.

“Barroso’s ultimatum is a counterproductive act of arrogance”, said the European Green Party co-chair Monica Frassoni speaking from the 16th Council of the European Greens in Copenhagen. “The only answers to Greek citizens and voters from the Commission’s President cannot be a threat to be thrown out of the Eurozone. This threat is an act of arrogance towards Greek voters.

The EU institutions should remind Greeks of their responsibilities, but should also be opening a European perspective based on solidarity to get out of the current stalemate. Barroso’s attitude can only foster more anti-EU feelings and the deepening of the Eurocrisis”.

Top EU officials have indicated that Greece should leave the Eurozone if unable to stick to the austerity measures imposed by European creditors. The political crisis currently unfolding in Athens is making this scenario not altogether impossible.

“We must stand together against the erosion of hope, in Greece and elsewhere and we have to show that another way is possible. An urgent signal of solidarity should be given by putting at the disposal of the Greek people EU funds to be redirected towards supporting welfare and Green jobs creation.

Even more urgent is to renegotiate the timeframe of the memorandum, and to reconsider the redistribution of the burden of measures more equally among Greek society, which is not the case at the moment”.

Unemployment in Greece stands at almost 21% with youth unemployment at twice that figure. There has been a 25% increase in homelessness over the past three years. Almost 28% of Greeks are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

Since the beginning of the Eurocrisis, the Greens have been pushing for a greater level of economic solidarity towards European countries in difficulty, namely Greece, advocating a system of Eurobonds, public-private bank recapitalisation, making the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) more robust and lowering the Greek debt burden to a realistic level.

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The EGP Future of Europe working group was established at the EGP Paris Congress last year, and brought together representatives of member parties, Green MEPs, the EGP and the Green European Foundation to put forward a new path for a Europe that Greens can work towards, a Union that would embody a political union to match the economic, and one that reinvigorates the interest of European citizens and restores their faith in the European project. The working group brought the fruit of their work to the Council in their paper – ‘Towards a Green Democratic Reform of the EU’ with the support of the EGP Committee. Working group chair Monica Frassoni was present to host the dicussion.

The debate focused around the role that democracy can and must play in the work that Europe needs to perform to not only solve the current crisis, but also prevent future crises like these happening in the future. Is there space for a democratic supranational system? Can the current treaty and institutional structure serve our purposes adequately? What role does regional division, particularly between North and South, play in the deteriotation of the European dynamic? The working group proposal contained some concrete details such as the proposals for the foundation of a sustainable tax base for Europe, including financial transaction and carbon taxes, as well as the establishment of a common consolidated corporate tax base and a “tax disarmament pact”, all of which flowed from the same principle – that the retreat to nationalism and national interests above communal interests can only lead to the breakup of the union and the end of the European project. The proposal roundly condemns the current fiscal compact treaty as ineffectual and harmful, and calls instead for a more real and complete economic union, matched with real political accountability.

Commission President Barosso’s statements on Greece’s membership of the EU from the previous day were particularly condemned as both bullying and irresponsible, and helped to shape discussion on what genuine EU level democracy can mean, and how we as Greens can both encourage it and participate in it in a productive fashion.

The paper itself was debated extensively, as were some of the proposed amendments, the number of which along indicated the priority that EGP member parties place on this topic. The vote on the motion was held on Sunday and the amended proposal passed with a comfortable majority and will shortly be available on the Council website and the new EGP website this week.

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The Council of the EGP has ended the Spanish green party, Confederacion de los Verdes’, membership of the European Green Party. The executive Committee of the EGP, following an official complaint on the failure of internal democracy in the Confederacion de los Verdes, has been working for two years on an attempted process of reconciliation, but this process was judged to be unsuccessful, and the proposal of the committee was submitted to the vote of delegates at the Copenhagen Spring Council. Among other concerns, the EGP is of the opinion that the Confederacion de los Verdes does not meet the requirements in terms of internal democracy, that the federation is an empty structure and that it failed in its primary aim: unifying Spanish greens across the country into one national Green voice.

Last year, 13 of the 16 parties that were previously part of the Confederacion sent the complaint to the EGP and subsequently, these same groups left the Confederacion and joined the new Spanish Green alliance, EQUO, which brings together 35 green parties as well as independent citizens, working together to build the new national Spanish green party. It is the belief of the EGP Committee that Equo is the best hope for a unified Green voice that respects Spain’s unique cultural makeup.

“Today’s decision is a step forward towards clarifying and consolidating the Spanish green political project, an independent and national Green option for Spanish voters is very much needed in these times of global crisis. It is important for Spain, and other European countries, to have a competent and credible voice to champion ecological proposals aimed at creating quality jobs and more sustainable economic activities”, said Monica Frassoni and Philippe Lamberts, co-chairs of the EGP.

The decision, which needed a ¾ majority of the 110 delegates from across 37 EGP (European Green Party) member parties, was adopted with over 90% votes.

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