working group
the European Green Party

The democratisation of the European Union entails a growing importance for European political parties as they contribute to the development of a European public space. In this context, this workshop deals with the present and future role of the EFGP. On the basis of an assessment of its present institutional structure and financial means, the workshop focuses on possible reforms: Shall individual persons and NGOs be permitted as members with consultative status?
How can bodies of national parties enter into a closer networking process?
Should a reform convention be established with a view to a comprehensive reform of the EFGP and a possible creation of a European Green Party?

PART I: Assessment of current state and background of reforms

Aim of this part: Clarify the background and the guidelines of an EFGP reform

a) Why do we need European political parties anyway?
b) The Statute on European political parties: State of legislation and its implications for European political parties
c) A short introduction to EFGP: structure, decision-making, financial situation
d) Benchmark: How far are the other European political parties?

Lecturer: Dr. Thomas Dietz, has written his PhD on the EFGP.

PART II: Reform of EFGP

Aim of this part: Assemble concrete steps to reform EFGP

a) Is an individual membership useful? Should individuals have full membership or just a consultative status?
b) How can the financial situation be improved?
c) Should the voting-procedures and the composition of EFGP's organs be changed?
d) What role for the Green Group within the EFGP?
e) Beyond EFGP-Reform: What can we do tomorrow? Experiences with and proposals for improving bi- and multilateral co-operation.

Lecturer: Outi Hannula, Member of the EFGP Committee (Treasurer)

1) A deepening of the co-operation between green parties in Europe is
necessary due to two main considerations. Both have been mentioned during the workshop-discussion. Firstly, a strengthening of the EFGP can be an important step to reduce the democracy-deficit in the EU. A strong EFGP that fulfils a transmission function in the political system of the EU reduces the gap between the citizens on the one side and the European institutions on the other side. This contributes to the creation of a European public discourse. Secondly, strengthening the EFGP is necessary in order to make the green movement a powerful European player. Since we agree on the basic aims and values, we have to organise ourselves in order to influence European politics in the most effective way.

2) A reform of EFGP in line with these considerations may raise fears. It is an important result of the workshop that such a reform must not lead to an exclusion of certain political positions from the decision making process.
Clearly, the diversity of the green family has to be preserved. Finding
compromises on the European level might be necessary because of the reasons mentioned above, but such compromises must arise out of all different positions and each political position should be found in such a fair compromise a posteriori. This implies for the EFGP-reform that we have to consider carefully what kind of structure fits best the condition of fair compromise making.

3) One first important step to strengthening the EFGP is to overcome its
poor financial situation. Raising the membership contributions should do
this. Improving EFGP's self-financing capacity becomes even more crucial in the light of the Commission's proposal on the Statute and Financing of European Political Parties. Given the co-financing-mechanism under the actual proposal, an increase of EFGP-funding by 1 Euro would increase its available means by 4 Euro in sum.

4) To allow for individual membership in the EFGP could be a way to
integrate potential militants who feel themselves more as European citizens and therefore want to become politically active directly on a European level or who are unhappy with their national green party. A voting-right of these individuals has rather been seen problematic. But individual members could contribute by their fees to improving EFGP's financial situation. By introducing individual membership the EFGP would also close the gap to other European political parties as EPP or ELDR.

5) A vital question is the status of non-EU member parties, which in the
mid-term perspective will not become EU members (Norway, Switzerland, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia etc.). Their actual integration in the EFGP-structure might become problematic with EU-financing of European political parties. Beside this, we discussed whether there are certain questions that should be decided only by members from the EU from a more fundamental perspective. It was controversial whether there are EU-intern questions that necessitate a separate treatment solely by EU member parties.
The problem that has to be solved can be put like this: Not all member
parties are concerned in the same way by the questions that have to be treated by the EFGP. The future decision making process within the EFGP has to reflect this matter of fact. It must ensure that each member is involved in the decision making process accordingly to the amount of being affected by the decision. Therefore, the future EFGP-structure has to implement an element of flexibility

Arnold Cassola, efgp@europarl.eu.int
Karola Wolprecht, Karola.Wolprecht@rz.hu-berlin.de
Daniel Thym, daniel@thym.de
Gregor Betz, gregor.betz@denkartist.de (all three working group on European affaires, Berlin)

resolution as proposed by Danial Thym

adopted resolution - setting-up of working group