Green Primary

The Green Primary

The Madrid Council mandated the Committee to proceed with preparations for the 3rd common Green election campaign for the European elections that take place on May 22 – 25, 2014.

The Council instructed the Committee to present a final proposal to the EGP Autumn Council on organising the first Europe-wide open online Green Primary that will decide on the two Green leading candidates for the 2014 campaign.

Following the draft campaign plan adopted by the Madrid Council and Annex A on the 2013 activities plan, the Council approves the Green Primary process, acknowledging the work done by the Committee and confirms the following rules, requirements and procedures.

Cooperation

-       The Committee has engaged Scytl (a renowned electronic voting company) and JF&C and KKLD* (renowned in the field of political consulting, advertising and digital communication) to support the Committee as consultants for the primary and the campaign itself.

Candidates and the role of Member Parties

-       The Committee will open the call for candidates from September 4. Candidates can present themselves until October 20 and need to be officially nominated by the Member Party of the interested candidates for the primary.

-       Candidates must be eligible for election to the European Parliament. The candidates must present themselves for the European elections on one of the lists (including alliances) of an EU EGP Member Party. They must present their political agenda in maximum two pages, be prepared to travel across the EU, to represent the Greens in the leading transnational debates with the other political families, and to campaign transnationally to support EU EGP Member Parties' campaign activities.

-       Member Parties need to explicitly consent to the participation of candidates they nominate in order for the candidates to enter into the primary in case the parties have not finalised their list of top candidate(s) before the closing date of candidacy for the primary. In principle the primary candidates should be heads of list of the national parties, unless a party gives its explicit consent to decide otherwise for its candidates.

-       After having been nominated, in a second step, all candidates, in order to emphasize the transnational character of the Green Primary, must acquire the explicit support of (at total of) at least four[1] EU EGP Member Parties by November 7, 2013 to become a contender in the Green Primary. Each candidate can receive the support of 8 parties at most. EU EGP Member Parties may only support one candidate  - this means that all contenders will have a minimum of four and a maximum of eight supporting Member Parties.

-       The party must confirm their choice in writing.

-       The Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG) may nominate a youth candidate. In such a case the candidate will equally require the support of at least four and a maximum of eight EU EGP Member Parties. FYEG is not a Member Party and as such can only nominate, but not support a candidate.

-       The EGP will be fully transparent during this process, and provide information on the candidate support to the international secretaries of the EGP EU Member Parties online as soon as possible after record of said support is received.

Contenders

-       The contenders will present themselves at the Autumn Council. Registration and voting in the Green Primary will officially start on November 10, 2013 and end on January 28, 2014.

Voting in the Green Primary

-       The Green Primary is open to members and sympathisers of EU EGP Member Parties. A sympathiser is anyone aged 16 or over, who lives in the EU and pledges affinity to the EGP or to an EU EGP Member Party that is participating in the European elections. Affinity means support of their principle values, political goals and their political work. All participants will be able to cast two votes.

-       To provide an adequate level of security and aim to ensure that each person can only vote once, the participants will be asked for a limited amount of data at registration. Following the principle of data minimization, we ask the participants only for as limited information as necessary, these are the full name, an email address, a mobile phone number and the country of residence. The EGP will only share after explicit consent of the participant, this data in a secure way with pertinent EU EGP Member Parties and immediately delete all personal data after the purpose for the primary is over and when administrative auditing is completed.

Credible system and audit of the Green Primary Process

-       The Green Primary process guarantees the credibility and safety of the system used, on the basis of all information available, the accountability and transparency of the system and the process, the privacy and security of the data of the participants, and the anonymity of the votes cast. The Committee has installed an electoral board with representatives from the Committee and EGP Member Parties[2]. This board functions according to the protocol adopted by the Committee. The system will be tested by end-users, experts on electronic voting and representatives of the EGP Member Parties. The whole process will be audited by an independent firm.

Mobilisation for participation

-       During the Primary voting phase, the EGP, in cooperation with the EU EGP Member Parties and external partners, will organise at least eight debates between contenders all over Europe, and organise events for the public through websites, Facebook, Twitter, and online hangouts that will make the contenders and green policies better known to the public [3].

-       With KKLD* and JF&C, the EGP has developed and implemented a mobilisation and communication strategy, that aims to guarantee the highest possible levels of voter participation.

The Green Primary = fair and accessible 

-       The EGP will provide a level playing field through equal promotion and equal representation and support to all candidates and contenders throughout the process. The Green Primary registration and voting platform is available in all official EU languages.

Helpdesk support

-       The Green Primary online process is intuitive and self-explanatory. The EGP, supported by Scytl, will provide a help desk to support participants when necessary.

The two Green leading candidates 

-       The contender with the highest number of votes will be elected. The second contender elected will be the person with the next highest number of votes who is from another national [or regional] list and, in case the first contender elected is a man, a woman. The result of the Green Primary will be announced and the two Green leading candidates presented at a press conference in Brussels on January 29, 2014.

-       The two Green leading candidates will be the heart and the face of our campaign and represent our political family throughout the campaign. We also express clearly that we would propose one of them as candidate for the EU Commission Presidency, should the opportunity arise.

[1]           The nomination as such does not count as a support.

[2]           Names of the participants of the electoral board are Emily Buening, Jacqueline Cremers (Chair), Katalin Csiba, Mar Garcia, Panu Laturi, Darcy Lonergan

[3]           See the separate campaign calendar and the overview of the primary calendar in the campaign plan (will follow).