Stop the EU Structural Reforms.

Since the Greek Crisis, EU Member States have decided to take a common attitude towards the crisis: cut the budget deficit by cutting social expenditure. Despite their different political colours, social democrats, liberals and conservatives are applying the same measures, huge packs of structural reforms as the International Monetary Fund has demanded. Moreover, this is being implemented while the crisis has not ended, meaning that the effect of aggregate demand contraction will be even more negative for economic recovery.

Concretely,Greece will cut the 7% of its GPD this year and 4% next one, when Spain, Portugal and Irland are setting cuts of 2-3% of them GDP by 2010 and 2011 and unexpected,  Germany’s government announced measures to save around €80 billions by 2014 as an example of budgetary discipline. In which budget line? In public servants wages, freezing wages and replace only a fraction of retiring workers with new hires. Moreover, pension cots will be cut in Greece, Spain and Italy. In Portugal, plans are to increase taxes, but direct taxes over consumption, which is totally regressive over house-holds income distribution.

FYEG denounces the incapacity of the Council of Europe to reach a common agreement to solve the financial problems. The heads of governments must commit to a common economic governance and give more power to Brussels to take democratic policies. Moreover, we cannot endorse any solution to this crisis without the introduction of a financial transaction tax. Last proposal has been sunk by the British veto and is unacceptable.

FYEG stands for a Social Europe, we cannot accept a reduction in wages of public servants, reduction in pensions and in public services. We also denounce the increases in indirect regressive taxes, such as VAT or consumption taxes, while high income and capital taxes remain untouched.

FYEG demands green and social expenditure to ensure peoples well-being in Europe.

Delfina Rossi

Report on Slovak elections results

On 12^th June 2010 the parliamentary elections in Slovakia took place with following results:

Social-democratic party SMER came out as a winner of the polls with 34, 79% of the vote , but a coalition of center-right parties have sworn not to join this party in government. The only parliamentary party willing to work with SMER are the Nationalists (SNS) and nobody else. These two parties hold a mandate of 71 parliamentary seats. Centre-right parties got all together 79 seats in 150-seat parliament. This situation provides only one conclusion that center-right parties gain the right to form a coalition government containing following parties: center-right Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKU) – which presided over government from 1998-2006, Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) – new right-wing party uniquely promoting decriminalization of marihuana and registered partnerships between same-sex couples , the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) and a Slovak-Hungarian party „Bridge“ (Most-Hid). It seems that first time in its history, Slovakia will have a female prime-minister Iveta Radicova (SDKU). This will be confirmed on Wednesday, 23^rd June, when the Slovak president should entrust Iveta Radicova with creation of a new government, since Robert Fico, the leader of SMER, has not been able to perform the task.

Slovak Green Party

The Greens in Slovakia didn’t run for these parliamentary elections on their own, but they made an agreement with a smaller newly formed left party called Slovak Democratic Left – SDL and put Green candidates on its the list. The quorum for entering parliament in Slovakia is 5% and for getting reimbursement for the election campaign it is necessary to get at least 3% in the polls. Despite of one of the biggest and most visible campaign strategies, that SDL got, it received only 2.41% of the vote, which is not enough for both conditions.

Slovak Green Party will not give up therefore. The Board will gather energy and start soon again with planning and preparations for another elections, the local ones, that will be organized in November this year.

Young Greens

Even though Slovak Young Greens (SYG) is an organization that is not an official youth wing of the Green political party, there were two Young Greens on the list of candidates for these elections. Jana Budacova, the chairwoman of SYG and Livia Magdoskova, the Board member of SYG. Also other members of SYG were supporting the Green party and helped considerably with campaigning.

Slovak Young Greens would like to thank to FYEG for organizing the General Assembly meeting with the Spring Conference in Bratislava. Such a big event helped to raise the profile of Slovak (Young) Greens and the green ideals in general as well.

Maggie

on behalf of Mladi Zeleni (Slovak Young Greens)

DWARS Congress in Rotterdam

Who are we? What are our main goals? Why are we doing this? – The congress of the FYEG member organisation DWARS that took place in Rotterdam from the 12th to the 13th of June was mainly dealing with questions of identity. About 70 people from all parts of the Netherlands gathered to discuss these issues, but also to evaluate the outcomes of the recent elections where GroenLinks, the mother party of DWARS, won ten seats in the Dutch parliament.

Regarding the elections a panel discussion was organised with two newly elected members of parliament and one academic expert on party politics in the Netherlands. The outcomes, the campaigns and possible coalition formations were critically assessed. Especially the good results for the right wing, xenophobic PVV (Party for Freedom) of Geert Wilders were seen as an alarming development for Dutch politics.

Saturday afternoon several topical workshops were organised. One was about sexuality and representation of sexuality in the media. After the presentation of a study about attitudes towards sexuality among young girls and boys in the Netherlands, we had a very passionate debate about what sexuality actually is (a biological need and a socially formed human interaction?), how media changes our own picture of sexuality (does porn improve my sex life?) and what can be done in order to make young people feel more confident about their sexuality (more sexual education, less sexualisation of the society?).

Furthermore, a new board was elected with Eline, the former spokesperson of FYEG, as “Vorsitter”. The other members of the new board are Layla de Jong as vice-chairwomen, Jaap van der Heijden as Secretary, Truuske Smits as Treasurer, Sander Kamphuis as International secretary, Marten Zoetbrood as political secretary, Giel van der Steenhoven as political secretary, Anna Schutte as political secretary, Rik van der Laan as general board member and Laura Tilly for Promotion and member issue.

One aspect of identity – the main focus of the congress – is of course the question of being part of a European movement such as the Federation of Young European Greens. DWARS is one of the biggest member organisations of FYEG. As the representative of FYEG at the congress I gave a short input on what we are doing at the moment, how the people can get involved and pointed out that a European identity is and has always been a major aspect of being Green in Europe.

To sum it up, I must say that I have learned a lot about Dutch politics, that I had a lot of fun and that I have to agree with the campaign recently launched by the Dutch Young Greens: Ik hau van DWARS:)!

Terry Reintke, Board Member FYEG

Exchange of Views with Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), on “Millenium Development Goals, Climate Change and Policy Coherence”

The extraordinary joint meeting of the Committee on Development and the Committee on Foreign Affairs on the topic “Millenium Development Goals” took place on the 10th June 2010 in the European Parliament.

Helen Clark had been invited to the European parliament to give a speech on the Millenium Development Goals and what has been reached so far. She is the former Prime Minister of New Zealand (1999 until 2008). At the moment she is administrator for the United Nations Development Programme.

In her input she pointed out that the European Union is one of the most important donors for development support in the world. She stressed the fact that this is not only a one-sided measure, but that both partners profit from development.

Climate change was mentioned as one of the biggest challenges for the next years – especially regarding development policies. The European states have the responsibility to act on this issue, because if they do not bring forward the efforts concerning climate change probably no one will.

It was pointed out that the current crises – climate change, hunger and the financial crisis, but also AIDS and the high rates of illiteracy in the world – can only be tackled together and that we need a holistic vision of what we want to achieve with the development tools that we have.

What is obviously needed, is a more coherent approach combining development, trade and environmental politics. In that context Ska Kellers recent report about policy coherence was mentioned and highlighted as one of the parliaments efforts to follow this.

Furthermore, the focus was put on the observation that the different problems that we currently face are more a result of a unjust distribution of goods in the world rather than a not changeable status because of a lack of resources.

Once again, Helen Clark made clear that she is fighting for a world with less poverty, more cooperation as well as a sustainable development and that she wants the European Union as a partner in this struggle.

Terry Reintke, Board Member FYEG

BP Oil Spill Must Inspire Action

The recent British Petroleum (BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst in U.S. history, has devastated the ecologically diverse, beautiful and productive coastline of the south east U.S. The region has been transformed into a cesspool and thousands of people who depend on the local natural resources for their jobs will lose their livelihoods.

Because the visual consequence of the BP oil spill was immediate, people reacted strongly to it. And yet the damage inflicted by this pales into insignificance compared to the more elusive consequences of global climate change. Therefore, environmentalists urgently need to better illustrate the possible catastrophe of climate change so that it becomes clearly evident in people’s minds. Indeed, we often discuss scientific facts and figures but all too often forget to mention the real human consequences and find examples to which people can emotionally relate to.

We need to highlight the links between climate change, BP and drilling for oil. We must make it clear that BP is not only responsible for cleaning up the mess in the Gulf of Mexico and for compensating the economic loss, but is also responsible for mining the tar sands in Canada and, most importantly, for the vast quantities of fossil fuels the corporation produces without paying for the catastrophic near future consequences.

All these disasters are linked together and, as Greens, our mission must be to help people understand this and inspire them to take action.

Here are few links for further information:

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/31/bp-oil-spill-death-impact
• http://www.spillthetruth.org/
• http://www.zcommunications.org/the-gulf-spill-continues-is-obama-powerless-against-bp-by-shamus-cooke
• http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/horizon-oil-spill.html

Sebastian Power, FYEG Spokesperson.