The main events in this period have been the finding of a new Office Coordinator and the 2nd Congress of the European Green Party, held in Geneva.
Both were resolved successfully, and we are happy to anticipate our new Office Coordinator, Judith Verweijen, who will start work in the office as soon as she resolves her previous tasks which include being an election observer in the Congo elections. Maarten Coertjens will fortunately be staying on with us until she can get settled in the office.
Judith already had her “trial of fire” at the Geneva Congress of the EGP, where also most of the EC managed to participate. In addition to a very well attended fringe meeting, FYEG tabled several amendments to the main document on the Green Future of Europe, had several of them accepted and argued vigorously for others. Our spokespersons, Ska and Ernest, also gave a very well received final speech that ended the Congress, and FYEG maintained a info booth where we invited people to take have their picture taken with a slogan of their choice. The results you can see in our image galleries.
The EC has held the usual phone conferences as well as one EC meeting in Istanbul, with the two next ones being planned for Prague and Bucharest. The EC has clearly taken a much more eastern composition, with now five EC-members living in South-East Europe and one in Central Europe, so the majority actually is in the East, for the first time in FYEG history!
Apart from that, it has been a normally busy period of negotiations, press releases, projects (with big FYEG participation in the CDN-project on ecological tourism in Bulgaria and the Chiche!-project on decroissance and basic income), as well as starting preparations for next years’ GA and continuing preparations for the Global Young Greens conference in Nairobi by parts of the FYEG team. Various elections have taken their time, and will continue to do so. We are also going to send out a very important questionnaire to all MO’s soon, so please be ready to reply to some questions!