{news} Fw: USGP-INT Europe's Green Dream Wilts But Won't Die

[Justine McCabe]

 http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,5830,1742070,00.html
 
 Europe's Green Dream Wilts But Won't Die
 Deutsche Welle
 October 15th, 2005
 
 The Greens lost their grip on power in Europe when Germany's Greens were 
 returned to opposition. However, parties elsewhere offer hope.
 
 Germany's Green party held a one day conference in the city of Oldenburg 
 on Saturday. The conference presented the former junior coalition 
 partner with the opportunity to look back over the last seven years of 
 power-sharing in the government while planning ahead for a future back 
 in opposition.
 
 However, a more productive use of the meeting would have been for the 
 party to take a long, hard look at where the Green dream went wrong, not 
 only at the last election but in German, and European, politics in 
 general over the past half a decade.
 
 At the turn of the century, the Greens were not only part of a serving 
 government in Germany but in four other European countries. France, 
 Italy, Finland and Belgium all had parties pushing environmental issues 
 closer to the forefront of policy-making through their Green 
 representatives.
 
 The news this week that Germany would be governed by a grand coalition 
 of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) 
 saw that era finally come to a close as Germany's Greens succumbed to 
 the fate that others had suffered as the sunflower started to wilt 
 across Europe.
 
 The retreat of Germany's Greens ends an era
 
 The return of the Greens to opposition in Germany, and the self-imposed 
 exile to the back benches of the party's most high profile minister 
 Joschka Fischer, left western European governments without a Green 
 representative.
 
 Having been ejected from government in Finland, France, Italy, Belgium 
 and now Germany, the Green movement could not be blamed for being 
 disheartened at the apparent failure of an environmental revolution in 
 the corridors of European power.
 
 "These are setbacks, clearly, in every case. Greens are not now shaping 
 policy," said Hubert Kleinert, once a German Green MP now a political 
 scientist, in an interview with the BBC. "During the last five years 
 there have been more defeats than victories. And I think this (German 
 result) is the biggest one." The Greens were overtaken by the liberal 
 Free Democrats and the new Left, even though their share of the vote 
 fell only about 0.5 percent.
 
 Former Euro Green chief says no need to panic
 
 Juan Behrend, the former secretary general of the Green federation in 
 the European parliament who once saw the rise of the Greens as "a 
 luminous sunflower was hanging in the grey sky," refused to be downcast 
 by the German result.
 
 He admitted that the election result had been a "blow" but was adamant 
 that the policies behind the Greens would survive. Coming back to 
 opposition would be "an opportunity" adding that the Greens were 
 specialists at making opposition politics and would be able to 
 "articulate a very coherent Green policy."
 
 All is far from lost. There may be shoots of re-growth for the Green 
 movement in other areas of Europe. The Greens play a role in Romano 
 Prodi's left-wing alliance in Italy, a partnership which looks set to 
 challenge hard in the elections next year, while in France the Greens 
 are expected to be part of the left-wing bloc competing in the 2007 
 campaign.
 
 Solid policies, awareness the Green lagacy
 
 However, the fact remains that there is no current Green representation 
 in the big western Europe governments and as a result there will be no 
 Green ministers at cabinet tables or EU ministerial meetings. Who will 
 be the force of environmental change without the Greens in power? Will 
 all that the movement, specifically in Germany, achieved be undone?
 
 Political analysts believe that it is unlikely that the shutting down of 
 nuclear energy plants and the huge increase in the use of renewable 
 energy in Germany will be reversed without the Green party, who 
 instigated these policies, in power.
 
 On the one hand, these ideas are now entrenched in the political 
 mainstream and on the other, the European electorate realizes the 
 importance of environmental protection, and they will not allow any 
 political party to neglect that in its policy making.
 
 The Green party's sunflower may have wilted but there seems to be enough 
 of a reservoir of belief and support around to keep it alive. And who 
 knows, the shoots of recovery may start to appear again in time.