For anybody interested in european politics there is a first and mayor issue to deal with: the normal citizen is -at best- uninterested in what is going on in Brussels. Brussels, or the european governing apparatus if you prefer, is across the whole range of european countries the mayor law making organism. The decisions taken there affects the daily life of europeans in ways hard to disregard. Nevertheless the European Parliament and the European Commission are not present in the political debate of citizens.

Reasons for this vacuum are not too hard to understand. To begin with, the european union encompasses a great diversity of political families, and a bigger diversity of ways to run a country. We have monarchies and republics, elected powerful presidents and managerial coalition-emerged prime ministers. We have governments run by greens, or by christian or social democrats or populist right and left wingers. To once more paraphrase one or another north-American big shot: whom should I call if I want to talk to europe? This phrase, valid for political leaders almost half a century ago, is still valid for the european citizen today. European government is hard to understand, and European power is at least diffuse and mostly unaccountable.

This situation bounces with the core ideas the european greens have of democracy. Since our early days, the power of green politics have been our commitment to work from the base upwards. We believe in organized neighborhoods, in connected communities, in local governments and national administrations... in that order. This model has served us well. As any data analysis shows, green politics win elections in communities with a tradition of green activism. Be it in Berlin, in Utrecht or in Barcelona, votes go to green national and european politicians when and if we count with a tradition of hard working local activists, city councilors and neighbors long ago committed to the green movement. Nevertheless this model has its shortcomings when dealing with the politics of Brussels.

Every reader of this note knows too well how hard is to interest the local activist in the dealings and negotiations occurring in the halls of the european parliament. Consider that in a fully democratic accountable and vertically organized party, functioning from bottom up, if you would want to participate in political debates on europe, you would have to walk your own party structure the whole way from your neighborhood to the halls of Brussels. Along the years we greens have developed party structures that are robust balanced and accountable. But this robustness is precisely a problem at the time to deal with the fluent -and apparently far away- situation in Brussels. You would have to organize the same discussion in the uncountable cities of europe today (say about several hundreds), then you should gather results and organize discussions at regional level (that might come to repeat the same feat about hundred times). Then it would be the time for the national level to kick in, and you are lucky, because you only need to deal with 27 different scenarios. And then you will be able to bring a political position -from the bottom up- to our representatives in Brussels. This model, whether as democratic and committed as it can possibly be, it is actually too hard to manage.

The solution to this conundrum is -nevertheless- easy. So far we have been seeing europe as a house funded in the many pillars of local organizations. But we also see that if we want to canalize debate along those existing pillars, we are faced with a tantamount task. But this house of us, this modern europe, is more than a collection of columns connected only at the top. As a matter of fact, there are connections at every other level. Many governments collaborate with each other, without necessarily consulting their electorates. Many political families do the same, whether their representatives are elected in Spain or in Sweden. Provinces gather in regions and lobby Brussels, and collaborate in shared projects were their nations do not have a lot of influence. Europe today is complex not only by the differences intrinsic to each nation, but also by the many connecting vessels in between every level. We greens need to acknowledge this complexity and deal with it, transcending our political tradition and building on our principles.    

As a matter of fact, we are already dealing with this complexity. The challenge that the structures of the EGP do face today is to recognize the initiatives that attempt and succeed in breaching the old borders of cities, provinces, regions and national states. These initiatives, call them networks, working groups, or special interests coalitions, exist already. We have got the senior and the young networks, we have got the North-South and the West-East dialogues, the North Sea, the Mediterranean and the Rotterdam/Antwerp coalitions. We have the Individual Supporters of the EGP as well. All those organizations share and build on the green ideology, and are no contradiction with our bottom-up idea of democracy. If anything, they add the needed horizontal communication to it. The future EGP should recognize the added value that they bring in our structures. The extra dimension that they bring has to have specific weight in our european party structure.

The key issue, of course, is which weight would that be. And, on top of that, how to identify the connecting vessels that are relevant for our goals? For these two crucial questions, we have, as a matter of fact, answers.

Consider the question of identifying which groups should be recognized. The principle of bottom up democracy can be adapted to answer. What we greens stand for is for organizations that empower the citizen to act for a greener society. We have a charter that defines what we actually understand for a greener society. From this charter do flow criteria that can be easily implemented to identify the networks that has to be included in the EGP. Does this network mobilize citizens for our ideas? Does it have transparent and accountable power structures that fit in our views of democracy? Does it collaborates with the other instances of our political organization, national and local parties? Does it connects citizens from different locations in action for our goals? If the answers are yes, there is no reason to exclude these networks in our deliberative organism, the council. And the same approach is valid when considering political weight. The EGP council knows a weighted representation of delegates. The same idea is easy to implement at the network level. Consider numbers of registered members and weight that accordingly. If you prefer, filter the weight of each member according to her or his country of provenance. In one way or another it is simple to imagine an agreeable weight for our horizontal organizations, in our democratic structure.

This reflexion started with the daunting complexity that european politics offers to the potentially interested citizen. We greens have deal with political power questions organizing ourselves bottom up, vertically if you want. We need to be true to this principle, recognizing that bottom up today also means transversal. The local citizen does recognize the relevance of european legislation when he or she is asked to participate from his or her perspective in the making of european political positions. This work, traditionally tackled only by national parties, is tackled today also by transversal organizations that link local power across borders. This is green power at its best, and the EGP will honor her principles recognizing it and giving space to it in our formal structure.