he French Greens are excited about the prospects with contributing posititively to Mr Ayrault’s first government offers.

Cecile Duflot takes the new and important Ministry for Regional Equality and Housing.   Pascal Canfin is the new Deputy Minister with responsiblity for Development.

The new cabinet of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault was announced on Wednesday evening, and was welcomed by EELV as “placing ecology at the heart of government”.

Newly inaugurated President François Hollande appointed Mr Ayrault on Tuesday. The Greens were hopeful of receiving some seats at cabinet from the Socialist Party president due to the electoral pact between the two parties for the upcoming legislative elections next month, and after EELV presidential candidate asked her almost 1 million voters to support Hollande in the second round as a progressive choice for France.

There are two Green members of the cabinet, which is split evenly between women and men, with 17 seats each. EELV National Secretary Cecille Duflot takes the new and important Ministry for Regional Equality and Housing, while MEP Pascal Canfin is the new Deputy Minister with responsiblity for Development, a key area of international solidarity with which we can work to build bridges between North and South.

The French Greens are excited about the prospects with contributing posititively to Mr Ayrault’s first government offers, and look forward to playing their part in securing its majority in the elections on June 10 and 17. Political ecology has clearly reached a new stage tonight.

http://europeangreens.eu/news/french-greens-return-government-new-cabinet

In local elections across the United Kingdom, the Green Party is celebrating progress  after adding new councillors and defending existing seats in England and Scotland.

In England, Greens won 26 seats, including defended all six seats in Norwich, retaining their position there as the official opposition to Labour, and gaining seats on three new councils. Overall the Green Party of England and Wales defended 18 existing seats and gained eight targetted new ones. Dudley

In London, Jenny Jones finished third for mayor in the city’s single-transferable vote election.  Both Jones andDarren Johnson were re-elected to the London Assembly, winning seats that were elected by proportional representation, as the Greens finished third for the Assembly as well.

Across England, new Greens seats came at the expense of the Conservatives (5), Labour (2) and the Liberal Democrats (1). The Greens lost seats it previously held to Labour (3) and the Conservatives (1), for a net gain of four seats.

In Scotland, Greens won 14 seats, gaining seven. Highlights include a doubling to 6 of Edinburgh Green councillors – twice as many as the Liberal Democrats, and retaining all 5 Greens in Glasgow, more than the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats combined.

Across the U.K. there were elections in 128 English councils, all 32 Scottish councils and 21 Welsh councils. Greens contested 943 seats in 119 councils and defended 22 seats they already held, and won an average of 9% of the vote in 454 wards, with their vote is up by one point in those wards they also contested in 2011.

Caroline Lucas, MP, Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales “This positive set of results for the Greens is a clear sign that our party is growing in confidence and steadily building support. Patrick HarvieMSP, Co-convener, Scottish Green Party agreed: “These results are incredibly positive and demonstrate that Greens have a significant role to play in local government.” Added Councillor Andrew Cooper, Chair Association of Green Councillors: “This is a party coming of age, which is showing that when it gets stuck into local issues like housing, it can actually make gains and then hold on to them despite the swings of the big three parties.”

The Scottish Green election manifesto ‘New Directions for local councils’ stated “Green candidates share a vision of a fairer, greener Scotland. We work for communities where services are local and where local people have a say in what their area looks like. It is about public services being kept in public hands. A cleaner, healthier environment, policies that are based on equality, both here and internationally, looking forward not back – these are the features of the Green approach to local government.”

The manifesto of the Green party of England and Wales was entitled ‘Make the Difference: The Green vision for a more equal, healthy and affordable Britain’ and shared a similar approach to greater local say in local government, along with a strong emphasis on affordable and green housing.

http://www.globalgreens.org/news/green-victories-in-uk-local-elections

The Green Party of England and Wales are celebrating a night of steady progress after they added to their number of councillors and successfully defended seats in existing strongholds.

The Greens won 34 seats – a net increase of 11.

They succeeded in winning seats in target areas such as Reading and Dudley and defended all six seats in Norwich.

As counting continues in London, mayor candidate Jenny Jones is currently third on first preference votes.

And the party is also currently third in the list of “London-wide” assembly members – those seats allocated via a form of proportional representation.

Ms Jones told the BBC the Greens were “cautiously optimistic” about the final assembly results and said it was “very, very exciting” to see she was currently coming third in the mayoral race.

But asked if she would pip Lib Dem Brian Paddick into third place she said: “I hesitate to say yes because who knows what the final votes will say but at the moment, it’s looking like it.”

Asked if the party could make headway in Parliament, where they currently have one MP, she said: “We definitely can get elected… If we can do this in London, just make such a splash, then we can do it in other places as well.”

However Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable said the Greens were “very, very localised” in their local election performance: “We could have lost a lot of ground to the Greens but we haven’t, where we have lost ground it’s mostly been to Labour.”

The Greens contested 943 seats in 119 councils and defended 22 seats they already held.

They have won an average of 9% of the vote in 454 wards and their vote is up by one point in those wards they also fought last year.

They had mixed fortunes in different parts of the country, winning all six seats up for grabs in Norwich – enabling them to remain as the second largest party on the council there and the main opposition to Labour.

The party also gained their third seat on Reading council.

But they lost their sole seat on Cambridge council after Adam Pogonowski defected to Labour before polls opened, saying he wanted to be part of a “bigger party that has real power to make a difference for people”.

The Greens had hoped to win their first ever seat on Cardiff council, having fielded 37 candidates across the city – but have not picked up any seats in results declared so far.

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Read Green Party reports on the election results:

http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/greens-celebrate-steady-growth-election-results.html

http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/green-party-celebrates-steady-progress-in-local-elections.html

Map/Chart of

Council results across the UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/vote2012/council/gb.stm

London Assembly http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/vote2012/assembly/

London Mayor http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/vote2012/mayor/

See how the preferences in London were cast here http://www.londonelects.org.uk/im-voter/results-and-past-elections/live-results-2012?contest=24

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17950083

Four bombs exploded in a city in eastern Ukraine on Friday, wounding 27 people, including nine children, in what authorities described as an “act of terrorism”.

President Viktor Yanukovich said the blasts in Dnipropetrovsk, six weeks before Ukraine plays host to the European soccer championship, represented “a challenge … to the whole country.”

Bomb attacks are a rare occurrence in the former Soviet republic and the blasts one after the other traumatised people in the city, one of Ukraine’s main industrial centres with a population of around 1.3 million.

“I had just stepped out of my house when I saw people run down the street screaming ‘Explosions!’,” said 50-year-old local journalist Tetyana.

“There is panic in the city. People are taking their children out of schools and rushing to their homes,” she said.

Police said the bombs had been left in rubbish bins at various points in the city. “No-one has been detained yet,” a police spokesman said.

Authorities offered no immediate explanation of any motive or say who they thought could be responsible. But the prosecutor general’s office formally opened a criminal case classifying the blasts as an “act of terrorism”.

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said the attacks could be exploited by his government’s critics. “It plays into the hand of the forces that want to destabilise the situation in the country …,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

Dnipropetrovsk, 400 km (250 miles) southeast of the capital Kiev, is not one of the four Ukrainian cities where Euro-2012 soccer tournament matches will be played.

But the bomb blasts will unsettle Ukrainian authorities who have expressed confidence they will be able to provide full security for the tens of thousands of European soccer fans expected to converge on the country in June and July.

Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko immediately left for Dnipropetrovsk and ordered extra internal troops to the city to boost regular police. Parliament went into emergency session.

UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, said it remained confident in the Ukrainian authorities’ ability to stage a “smooth and festive tournament” despite the bombings.

POLITICAL TENSION

The first blast occurred at a tram stop at 11:50 a.m. (0850 GMT), wounding 13 people and shattering the windows of a nearby tram and car.

The second explosion came 30 minutes later next to a cinema, injuring 11 people, nine of them children, the Emergencies Ministry said in a statement.

The third blast followed shortly afterwards next to a park, injuring 2 people, it said. The fourth explosion, also in the downtown area, caused no casualties, said the ministry whose estimate of injuries was lower than that of police.

Dnipropetrovsk is one of the former Soviet republic’s biggest industrial hubs and was a key centre of the nuclear, arms and space industries in Soviet times.

It provided a springboard for former President Leonid Kuchma, who was in office from 1994-2005, to rise to power. It is also the birthplace of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko.
Political tension is high in the country because of the detention of Tymoshenko who was jailed for seven years last October for alleged abuse-of-office which she denies.

Her imprisonment has prompted sharp criticism from Western governments which see her trial as political revenge by Yanukovich, who narrowly beat her for the presidency in February 2010.

Ukraine’s neighbour, Russia, offered to help the authorities investigate the bombings. Poland, another neighbour and Ukraine’s co-host of Euro-2012, said the bombings were an exceptional event.

“We have to treat the issue very seriously, not only because it’s a tragedy, we’ve heard about casualties, many people wounded,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters.

“Any attack in our region is something rather exceptional, and I think we can talk of an attack at this point, while the context of the Euro 2012 makes us especially sensitive to such events.”

Pavlo Khazan, vice chair of the Green Party of Ukraine, commenting on the development of situation with the trial against former Ukrainian prime-minister, stated:

“We understand and we declare that the trail processes against former prime-minister Tymoshenko, former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko and other members  of the former cabinet of ministers, were politically motivated and failed to meet the European and international standards of modern civil society. It is nonsense that President Yanukovych speaks of Ukraine’s European vector and demands the prospect of EU membership, while ignoring basic European values. Everybody understands that he is the main playwright behind the prosecution of Tymoshenko.”

In the Resolution on current developments in Ukraine the Greens in the European Parliament remind the Ukrainian authorities that there is a common European understanding and distinction between decisions taken within a political process while in office without personal enrichment and decisions that legitimize corruption and imply directly or indirectly a personal economic advantage; regrets, in this regard, the decision of the Verkhovna Rada to postpone the consideration of legislative changes that should remove imprisonment as a penalty for certain types of economic crime and could allow for Tymoshenko’s release. At the same time they stress the great importance of Ukraine’s European integration process for the pursuance of economic, social and political reforms in Ukraine; point out, nevertheless, that substantial progress as regards the negotiations of the Association Agreement is linked to the respect of EU democratic standards and the rule of law.

Members of European Parliament of the Green group call on the European Commission to assist the judiciary reform in Ukraine by making better use of the EU Capacity building programme and to consider the creation of a High Level EU Advisory Group to Ukraine to assist the country in its efforts to align with EU legislation, including the judiciary.  

“The majority of Ukrainians understand that the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuri Lutsenko is a politically motivated that threatened of personal security of every citizen. Public opinion supports an assumption that politically motivated persecution of a high-level politicians scrutinizes safety of the general population. Ukrainian president, the government and the Ukrainian Parliament have to respect for human rights and the rule of law above all. Otherwise Ukraine’s ambitious on association agreement with EU will be only ambitions. We believe that strengthening the ties with the European Union at all levels with a view to reinforce Ukraine’s European perspective can only be based on respect for human rights and the rule of law in Ukraine” – said Pavlo Khazan.