9 October 2008

Thursday evening

Dan Boyle and myself barely made it to Dublin airport this evening for our 8pm flight to Beauvais, Paris. We were travelling to a Greens-EFA Group / European Greens Council meeting in Montreuil, Paris from 9th-12th October called “For a Greener Europe.”

The Council meeting is of particular interest to us because the European Greens are going to be discussing their ‘common manifesto’ for next year’s European elections and will be making decisions on the content of the common election campaign that will be launched before the European elections.

I find it exciting to think of the European Greens becoming a more organised and coherent political force. The national Green parties are all dealing with the same political issues, including environmental protection, worker’s rights, fair trade, safe food, energy security, climate change, sustainable transport etc. It is clear that we can learn from each other and work to achieve European-level solutions to many of these political challenges.

The Council meeting is being held in Montreuil, a suburb of Paris that has elected its first ever Green Party Mayor – Dominique Voynet (that’s her in the photo). Dominique is a very experienced politician and was a Minister for the Environment in the past under President Francois Mitterand.

10 October 2008

Friday

The first session today was a very lively one on the topic of “State of Affairs; the EU Commission’s Energy/Climate package”. The speakers at the top table included Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the French Secretary of State for Ecology and Yannick Jadot, the former Greenpeace Campaign Director, in France, who will run for the Greens in next year’s European elections.

The issues that generated most ‘heat and light’ during the debate were the issues of nuclear energy, the need for binding targets in the area of energy efficiency, the need to avoid allowing governments to dilute the targets set in the EU climate/energy package following pleading from special interest lobbies such as the car industry, and the need to provide more certainty and guaranteed price supports for green investors/businesses.

There was plenty of time for networking between the sessions and I met other Green colleagues from Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Belarus, Greece, Brazil and Finland, amongst other countries. The energy and idealism at these events is always very inspiring. Most Greens are visionaries, and when a couple of hundred of them get together under the one roof to share that vision and to translate it into concrete workable policies, it is a very powerful experience indeed.

There is a good deal of pragmatism around at these events as well. Quite a few of the European Green Parties have been in Government at some stage, and their idealism is tempered by an understanding of how important it is to strategize carefully about how to mainstream Green policy proposals.

The food served at lunch time was organic and vegetarian, and there was a lot of interesting green political literature laid out on the tables to read and browse during the break-times. Unfortunately I missed most of a session on ‘Food Security and GMOs’ but picked up a very good CD that had been produced by the European Greens on the issue that I will watch when I get home.

The next major session was a Round Table on “Capitalism – first socio-ecological crisis”. Again the speakers were very interesting and included Mr Pascal Canfin, journalist at “Alternatives Economiques” and Mr Jerome Gleizes, Professor of Economics at Paris XIII University.

The Green Party is the only political party that has fundamentally critiqued “Growth Economics” as unsustainable in the longer term given the finite nature of the planet and its resources. There was a lot of very sobering debate about the dangers of largely self-regulating international financial markets and the fact that many new complex financial products and commodities being traded on those markets contribute little to any ‘real economy’. The challenge facing the European Union in terms of developing an effective response to the current crisis in the international financial markets was emphasized and some proposals were loosely debated.

This is an area that requires urgent political attention within the EU in my opinion. If the EU is to be seen as relevant and politically effective by the citizens of its Member States, then EU membership must deliver added value to citizens in terms of a greater capacity than the national level to provide protection in times of international crises such as the present one.

I think it is regrettable that the EU Commission was seen to be less than satisfied with the Irish Government for its speedy response in providing a guarantee to certain key Irish banks. This action by the Irish Government was absolutely necessary in order to protect the viability and stability of our banking system, which in all likelihood would have been badly damaged had we waited for a European-level response.

Any new EU-level financial regulatory system will have to include a capacity for national-level action within a wider system of EU co-ordination and control. I hope that concrete policy proposals to this effect will discussed at EU Council of Ministers and EU Commission level very soon. I did raise this issue with the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, during the all-night debate in the Seanad about the legislation to provide the guarantee for Irish banks and he seemed in full agreement that a system of financial regulation at a Eurozone-level at the very least, should be a priority for European leaders.

11 October 2008

Saturday

Today was another mild sunny day in Paris. I attended a good debate on Human Rights and the EU, and how to make the EU Human Rights Policy within, and outside of the EU more effective. It was stressed that human rights were not a “fair weather” concept, something that could only afford respect when conditions were favourable. One speaker commented that in dark times particularly, human rights are what preserve civilisation and prevent a ’slide into barbarism’. However, it was also stressed that any political entity such as the EU that wishes to argue credibly for the universality of human rights must begin at home. In particular the areas of the treatment of minorities, asylum seekers and refugees were highlighted as policy areas that should be guided by human rights.

Concerns were expressed about the monitoring of all EU borders by unmanned aircraft and satellites, the finger-printing of all travellers entering the EU and the risk that a “Fortress Europe” might emerge in the future. Speakers called for a “grand EU strategy” which coordinated refugee and immigration policy as well as development, foreign trade and human rights policy in a meaningful way. It was also stressed that terrorists must be fought within the realm of the rule of law, and that terrorism can be further stoked by the use of military force.

One speaker denounced the undermining of basic human rights standards under the pretext of combating terrorism, or through allowing the anti-terror card to make human rights violations seem more acceptable. It was reported that Mary Robinson, former Irish President and UN High Commissioner on Human Rights had argued that today’s human right’s violations are tomorrow’s wars.

Dan Boyle and myself had an informal meeting with Danny Cohn Bendit and several other members of the European Green Party to update them on the Irish position following our rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in June this year. It is interesting to see that there is still a sense of confusion and disbelief on the part of public representatives from other Member States that the Irish people close to reject the Lisbon Treaty. We discussed the implications of this refusal for the European elections next year, and the likely composition of the European Parliament and Commission.

I informed them that I have been nominated to represent the Green Party on the new Oireachtas cross-party sub-committee on the Future of Ireland in Europe which is due to report back and provide recommendations to the Irish Government by the end of November this year. The recommendations of the sub-committee should inform the position of the Irish Government when it attends the December Summit of the EU. At this point greater clarity will be required by other Member States regarding how Ireland chooses to define its future relationship with the EU.

After lunch we were addressed by special guest Wangari Maathai who won a Nobel Peace Prize based on the work that she did in setting up the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. This is a women’s movement that undertakes tree-planting projects to compensate for the environmental damage done by logging companies in Kenya, many of them foreign. She is a very impressive individual and spoke about the challenges facing African countries at present.
I am now in the Press Room writing this blog.

Later on we have a round table on migration and integration policy within the EU and that is followed by a party with live music and Lebanese food. Can’t wait!

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Blog by Deirdre