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Better Europe for a Better Greens

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Better Europe for a Better Greens GREENS A BETTER FOR EUROPE – Sir Mark Rylance – While Greens in the UK have always suffered from a grossly unfair electoral system, in the European Union they have been able to flourish as part of a small but GREENS effective group of European Greens since their first election in 1999. Greens have had a significant influence on the policies impacting more than 500 million EU citizens, underlining environmental standards and challenging FOR economic and social orthodoxy. While Greens have often been marginalised by the political and media elites in Britain, across Europe, Greens have been seen as ‘the voice of reason’ and the ‘adults in the room’. A With Brexit threatening our ongoing influence on European policy-making, former and current UK Green MEPs Caroline Lucas, Jean Lambert, Keith Taylor and Molly Scott Cato reflect on their time in Brussels and chart a course for the party’s new relationship with the BETTER EU-wide Green movement. This guide to two decades of UK Green achievements in Europe also brings together analysis from prominent academics, journalists, campaigners and Green MEPs from across the EU. EUROPE TWENTY YEARS OF UK GREEN INFLUENCE IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, 1999–2019 EDITED BY LIAM WARD WITH JAMES BRADY GREENS FOR A BETTER EUROPE GREENS FOR A BETTER EUROPE TWENTY YEARS OF UK GREEN INFLUENCE IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, 1999–2019 EDITED BY LIAM WARD WITH JAMES BRADY LONDON PUBLISHING PARTNERSHIP Copyright © 2019 Office of the Green MEPs, Natalie Bennett, James Brady, Reinhard Bütikofer, Samir Jeraj, Klina Jordan, Tony Juniper, Jean Lambert, Caroline Lucas, Wolfgang Rüdig, Molly Scott Cato, Keith Taylor, Liam Ward and Owen Winter Published by London Publishing Partnership www.londonpublishingpartnership.co.uk All Rights Reserved ISBN: 978-1-907994-88-3 (paperback) ISBN: 978-1-907994-89-0 (ePDF) ISBN: 978-1-907994-90-6 (ePub) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This book has been composed in Adobe Garamond Pro Copy-edited and typeset by T&T Productions Ltd, London www.tandtproductions.com Cover design by Minute Works This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic License. To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creative commons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ or send a letter to: Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA CONTENTS biographies vii preface by tony juniper xiii Part I Setting the scene: history and context 1. Green parties and elections to the European Parliament, 1979–2019 3 Wolfgang Rüdig 2. Proportional representation and Britain’s democratic deficit 49 Klina Jordan and Owen Winter Part II The UK’s Green MEPs: in their own words 3. London, Brussels and beyond: my work as a Green MEP 83 Jean Lambert 4. From Brussels to Westminster: how corporate power captured politics 115 Caroline Lucas 5. Changes 133 Keith Taylor Part III The UK’s Green MEPs: perspectives from friends 6. Greens and campaigners: a natural affinity 165 Natalie Bennett vi CONTENTS 7. Powerhouse parliamentarians: how Greens made friends and influenced policy 183 Samir Jeraj Part IV Brexit and beyond: solidarity for the future 8. Stronger In? The logic of pan-European co-operation in the era of Trump and climate change 207 Molly Scott Cato 9. European Greens: a global vision? 227 Reinhard Bütikofer index 237 acknowledgements 249 BIOGRAPHIES About the authors Natalie Bennett was born in Australia, where she began her work- ing life as a journalist, after studying agriculture at the University of Sydney. She has lived on three continents, having spent four years in Bangkok, half of which saw her working as a volunteer for the National Commission on Women’s Affairs. Natalie was also involved in UN consulting on women’s and children’s issues. However, she was always going to head back to the UK (having visited first as a backpacker in 1990). So, after settling in England, she fostered a career in British national newspapers, working for The Telegraph, The Times, the Independent and finally as editor ofThe Guardian Weekly for five years. Natalie joined the Green Party in 2006 and was leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2012 to 2016. After serving two terms as leader, she has continued in full-time politics as former leader, focusing particularly on the North and Midlands of England, on issues including universal basic income, fracking and making the UK a democracy. In 2017 she was the Green Party gen- eral election candidate for Sheffield Central, where she now lives. Reinhard Bütikofer is an MEP (Greens/EFA) and the co-chair of the European Green Party (EGP). He sits on the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) as a full member, and on the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) as a substitute member. He is viii BIOGRAPHIES the vice-chair of the European Parliament’s Delegation for relations with the People’s Republic of China as well as a member of the Del- egation to the United States and a substitute member of the ASEAN delegation. Before being elected to the European Parliament in 2009, Mr Bütikofer was the co-chair of the German Green Party, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance 90/The Greens), from 2002 until 2008. He was the party’s secretary general from 1998 until 2002. Prior to that he served as the chair of the Greens in the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg. From 1988 until 1996 he served as a member of the Baden-Württemberg State Parliament. His engagement with the German Greens began when he was elected as a member of the city council in Heidelberg in 1984. Samir Jeraj is a freelance journalist and author. From 2008 to 2012 he served as a Green Party councillor in Norwich. He has written extensively on housing issues and social affairs in the UK. Inthis capacity, he served as Keith Taylor’s researcher on his reports on the growth of foodbanks and other types of emergency food aid in the South East of England. Samir co-authored The Rent Trap: How We Fell Into It and How We Get Out of It (Pluto Press, 2016), a book about private rented housing. Klina Jordan co-founded and facilitates Make Votes Matter, the UK movement for proportional representation. A lifelong activist, Klina’s dedication to environmental and social meliorism has led to a focus on systemic change to enable progress: working to get the basic build- ing blocks of democracy into place. She has diverse expertise from a 20-year career including events, marketing, business development, management and sustainable enterprise. She uses that experience to lead a positive and practical movement for real democracy, including a growing alliance of parties, organisations and public figures, dozens of local campaign groups and tens of thousands of activists. Tony Juniper CBE is a long-serving British environmentalist. He has worked with many environment and conservation organisa- tions, including as executive director of Friends of the Earth and as BIOGRAPHIES ix president of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. He has worked as an environment advisor to The Prince of Wales and as a fellow with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He is the author of many ecologically themed books, including the multi-award-winning best seller What Has Nature Ever Done for Us? (Synergetic Press, 2013). Tony was the Green Party candidate for the Cambridge constituency in the 2010 general election. Jean Lambert has been London’s Green Party MEP since 1999 and a member of the Green Party since its early days. She has been a long-standing member of the European Parliament’s Commit- tees on Employment and Social Affairs, and Civil Liberties, usticeJ and Home Affairs; the chair of its official Delegation for relations with South Asia; and the co-president of its anti-racism intergroup, among others. She has participated in EU election observation missions in Africa and Asia. Jean is a winner of The Parliament Magazine’s award for human rights work, and she is a patron of human rights theatre company ice&fire. A passionate internation- alist, Jean co-chaired the Green Party’s Greens for Europe cam- paign during the EU referendum, and she is the party’s national migration spokesperson. Jean was a teacher in East London before becoming a Green MEP. Caroline Lucas was first elected as MP for Brighton Pavilion in 2010. She served as leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2008 to 2012, and co-leader from 2016 to 2018. From 1999 to 2010 she was one of the party’s first MEPs and represented the South East region until becoming the UK’s first Green MP. Caroline holds numerous senior positions in parliamentary groups, such as chair of the all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) on climate change and limits to growth; deputy chair of the APPG on renewable and sustainable energy; and vice chair of the APPGs on better Brexit for young people, drug policy reform, European citizenship rights, proportional representation, refugees, and sixth form colleges, among others. She also sits on the UK parliament’s influential Envi- ronmental Audit Committee and has sat on temporary committees x BIOGRAPHIES set up to scrutinise British government legislation. Caroline’s book, Honourable Friends? Parliament and the Fight for Change (Portobello Books, 2015) details her first parliamentary term as a fresh, Green voice before the House of Commons. She has also co-edited a book on cross-party working: The Alternative: Towards a New Progressive Politics (Biteback Publishing, 2016). Wolfgang Rüdig is a Reader in Politics at the University of Strath- clyde, Glasgow, Scotland.
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