Congratulations, Strana Zelených! This Saturday in Prague, our Member Party in the Czech Republic, Strana Zelených, elected a new party leader, 32-year-old Matej Stropnicky. A former deputy mayor of Prague, Mr Stropnicky was elected for a two-year term by 250 delegates during the weekend congress, together with a seven-member bureau. Physician Irena Moudrá Wünschová was elected first deputy chairwoman, while Michal Bert is second deputy chairman and Petr Kutilek third deputy chairman.

"The Greens must be an alternative to the current government and the opposition," said Matěj following the vote. We need a strong movement with the Greens at the core, strengthened by smaller local groups and parties that are successful in local politics and have similar values to the Greens. Matěj Stropnický also stated that his team's main goal is to be successful in the next parliamentary elections, which should be held in 2017, as well as in the regional elections in autumn this year. Founded in 1989, the party first participated in government and in the Parliament after the parliamentary elections of 2010. Today, Strana Zelených is represented in the Senate.

Reinhard Bütikofer EGP co-chair, was in Prague for the congress, and delivered a speech on Saturday. "We have to recognise that the overall development of our societies over the last years has created a very vague and pervasive sense of insecurity," he said, adding that "if we don't want that the politics of fear prevails then we have to make the politics of hope successful. Hope is something that you can preach but by preaching hope alone you will not convince people. You have to be practical and you have to create hope, otherwise you will not turn anger into hope. The EU is presently under a lot of stress. We have a new 'normal': overlapping crises and challenges, and this will not change for the foreseeable future. How should Greens act in this situation? We have to combine vision and pragmatism, a sense of orientation where we propose to go with reliability to give pragmatic solutions."

 Good work, Strana Zelených!