European Green Party

Greece has acquired a new political party, the Green-Ecology party, which, at its founding congress in Athens on Sunday, decided to adopt the European Green Party's manifesto ahead of European Parliament elections in June. 

The lack of a political culture that values environmental issues, the presence of antagonistic political trends, and persistent internal skirmishes are the primary obstacles that prevent the green parties in Greece from establishing themselves as a meaningful political force, according to experts.

The good news is that the notoriously fractious Greek eco-parties have banded together, with the encouragement of the European Greens, to contest the May 21 election.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is backing Saturday's planned shutdown of the country's last three operating nuclear power plants, even though one of the smaller partners in his coalition government, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), is proposing to keep the reactors as an energy "reserve," reports DPA, quoted by BTA.

In a political landscape dominated by big parties, local environmentalist movements have won a number of seats on municipal councils for the first time.

While Croatia's ruling centre-right conservatives can console themselves with respectable results outside the capital in the local elections, the May 16 first round in the local elections brought no such comfort to Croatia's traditional left-wing standard bearers, the Social Democrats, SDP. In left-leaning Zagreb, they did even worse than the conservatives.

Ljubljana – Former Environment Minister Jure Leben is returning to politics to launch the Party of Green Action (Z.DEJ), whose founding congress will be held online on Saturday. In conceiving the manifesto, the main question was how to find a balance between industrial development and environment protection, he told the newspaper Delo.

Ljubljana – The environment and economy ministries have withdrawn a planned provision allowing construction of manufacturing facilities which use hazardous materials in water protected areas. The decision was welcomed by the Greens Slovenia party, and by environmentalists, who however also want the other contentious provision removed.

More than 100 members of the European Parliament are calling on the Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA) and European Union interior ministers to take immediate action to end the ongoing humanitarian crisis on the Greek islands where more than 46,000 migrants live in shelters that have a total capacity of 8,000 people.

But while Greens in countries such as Germany, France and Britain have a 40-year head start in learning from mistakes and engaging with the public, environmentalists in former communist nations find the odds stacked against them.