Putting the European people in the center of the Greens’ campaign

Keywords

EU 2014 Campaign

eu2014

While summer days are quiet days in the streets and on the squares around the European institutions in Brussels, there’s one place that doesn’t seem to care much about the holidays: the campaign hub of the European Green Party.

There’re nine months to go until next year’s European Elections. Nine months for our campaign team to translate the ambitious campaign plan into action. Aiming for more votes than in the 2009 European Elections, when we achieved our best result ever (7.5% EU-wide), our team is preparing a campaign that will be based on three pillars: personalisation, participation and transnationalisation.

By Johannes Hillje, EGP Campaign Manager

Green leading candidates

Two leading candidates will be the faces of our campaign. They will represent the Greens allover Europe, alongside the national top candidates, and compete with the leading candidates that the other European

Setting up the EGP's new Campaign Hub.

parties will hopefully put forward. Since the European Council’s nomination for the next European Commission President has to take into account the result of the European Election, these lead candidates should play a vital role in the parties’ campaigns.

A people-powered campaign: first open Europe-wide Primary

In times where people feel increasingly powerless towards what is being decided on a European level, we’ll make the citizens the architects of our campaign. Europeans will have a direct say in the selection of our leading candidates through an online primary, in which all Europeans as of the age of 16 can vote. This Green Primary is an unique experiment of e-Democracy. No European party has ever before invited the citizens to participate in such an internal selection process. Our aim is to prove that direct democracy is possible on a EU level.

But the participatory character of our campaign will not stop with the selection of our leading candidates. Throughout our campaign, which will be “digital by default”, we’ll try to open up a public space, where people from all over Europe can discuss with us.

A real European campaign

Marko and Benedetta, the new members of our campaign team.

The green parties from the EU member states will jointly run the third European Elections campaign next year. How does this common campaign work in practice? We’ll develop a campaign with all the common elements from a claim to posters and make them adaptable to the national campaigns of our member parties. We’ll lay out our vision for Europe in a common manifesto. We’ll campaign across borders by organizing transnational events. For all that, our green member parties are working together in different working groups since the beginning of this year.

Since our campaign team in Brussels has a coordinative and facilitative role for our member parties in the organization of the campaign, we call our campaign headquarters the “Campaign Hub”. Just this month we welcomed our newest colleagues, Benedetta from Italy and Marko from Croatia. Our truly European team works hard – no matter of the temperatures outside – to make the elections a great success for the European Greens.