Six candidates have presented themselves to become a Green Leading Candidate in the Green Primary, that we are organising as European Greens: five of them nominated by their Green party, one by the Federation of Young European Greens. It was the first of a series of deadlines that we face in the procedure. And as with every deadline it was exciting too see if last minute nominations would come in and if we would receive all of them in time.
More than anything, our six candidates show the support that we have from our member parties for this innovative project, in the context of the third common European Green campaign that we are preparing as Green parties in Europe. It also shows the engagement and the commitment of the candidates themselves. It is audacious of the candidates to participate in this e-democracy project, it is not easy, nor self-evident and asks a lot of our candidates. It is unknown territory, and it is them that take a risk. Not because we haven’t taken careto ensure the best possible process, but because this is something new. This is groundbreaking and that means that every step is not 100% secure. It requires courageous and progressive people and I am proud to say that six candidates are willing to engage with us and write history!
Thank you Jose Bove, Monica Frassoni, Rebecca Harms, Ska Keller, Ulrike Lunacek and Jolanda Verburg.
Now the second, the support phase begins. Member Parties from the EU28 have until noon on November 7 to support our candidates. Each Candidate needs four parties to support them, and each Candidate can only receive the maximum support of eight parties.
It makes me proud that we are well ahead of the other parties in engaging our member parties and the public. The other parties are getting increasingly nervous and also excited about our experiment. And to give them the credit that they deserve; they are all genuinely interested in the process. How are we going to do it, how are we going to manage? It is breaking ground for what will be a normal procedure in the future. You can feel it!
This weekend I was at the German Greens Congress. Many people came to us with a lots of questions and suggestions on the Green Primary. Some were better than we could come up with and that means, finding ways to incorporate the suggestions and finding answers to the questions. Some were a bit of a nuisance, I admit! But each and every of these questions, nuisance or not, helped us to sharpen our minds and will result in a better prepared primary process! If only that our fact sheets will improve considerably! If anything it showed the interest, the commitment and the genuine concern for this major innovative project.
We've begun testing the Green Primary voting platform - it's looking great!
Now we wait for the Council, where we can present our Contenders and where we will open the #GreenPrimary.
I am very much looking forward to it and you are most welcome to join us, you can register here.
