European parliament election results strengthens the Greens

Photo credit: rockcohen

Green political parties from across Europe made a successful European parliament election this past week. The European Greens gained 11 new seats in the parliament and will now have a total of 46 Green MEPs, an increase with 31%. The Greens/EFA Group is now likely to have 53 MEPS (46 Greens and 7 EFA MEPs).

“To have increased the number of Green MEPs from 35 to 46 is a great success. Our showing is even more remarkable when you consider that we have 11 more seats than before in a parliament with 49 fewer MEPS and that all other groups have shrunk”, said EGP Co-Spokesperson Philippe Lamberts, who has been elected a MEP for the Belgian French-speaking Green Party Ecolo.

In France the green political party Europe-Ecologie gained 16% of the votes and will thus send 13 green MEPs to the European parliament. Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Finland are other countries where the greens will receive more MEPs than from the last EU election. In Greece 3.48% of the people voted for Ecologoi-Prasinoi and as a result Greece will be able to send their first green MEP to the European Parliament.

“The Greek Greens’ campaign demonstrated European solidarity as an Austrian-Greek Green stood as a candidate to support the Greek party”.

“What our 31% increase in seats proves beyond any shadow of a doubt is that the Greens are a major political force to be reckoned with and that we are gaining the trust of more and more voters, not only in our traditional areas like the environment and climate policy and human rights, but also economics and social policy“, Lamberts said.

The greens across Europe will together and stronger than ever work hard to gain support in the parliament for their €500 billion new Green Deal which will help solve the economic crisis and save our climate.

EGP Co-Spokesperson Ulrike Lunacek, who was also elected a MEP for the Austrian Greens and managed to maintain their 2 seats despite heavy waves of rightwing populism, thanked all the people who dared to “Think Big, Vote Green”.

“We will fight hard on their behalf for a Green New Deal for Europe, which was at the heart of our common election campaign and obviously appealed to many voters, including many who had never voted Green before,” she said. “The Green New Deal would not only create 5 million new Green-Collar jobs in 5 years but would also help fight climate change as 500 billion Euros of public and private funds would be invested in renewables, energy efficiency and other future-oriented technologies”.

I am happy to see that the Greens has a growing support among the voters across Europe, and that they will with the support of the voters get at least 10 more seats in the EU parliament. And I am happy to see that Sweden (for now) isn’t taking part in the Europe-wide trend of sending far-right extremist, racists and anti-democratic political parties to the European Parliament.

Election Results

The Green election results can be found below:

Simon Leufstedt is the editor of Green Blog. Simon has previously studied Global Environmental Justice and is currently studying Human Ecology and Political Science at Lund University in Sweden. Simon is also blogging over at the Swedish 350 website and working with the Swedish TckTckTck organisation. You can follow Simon on Twitter and on Google+.
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