Green Ties
The Czech Greens between Prague and Brussels
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In Eastern Europe, Green parties have not been able to achieve the degree of importance that some of their sister parties enjoy in Western Europe. Even in the Czech Republic, where social conditions for an ecological movement were rather good, the Greens have remained largely marginal. On top of that, the German Greens, junior party in a national governing coalition, avoided their Czech counterparts due to fundamental political differences. Only after a change of leadership in the Czech Green Party did the European Green Party begin to support their Czech colleagues. But the new leadership under Jakub Patočka continued to resist EGP efforts to exert influence on the Czech party. Even after another turnover at the top of the Czech Greens in September 2005, changes supported by the European Greens, the EGP now finds itself confronted by a group around Patočka, which, together with the Finnish, Hungarian, and Latvian Greens, is forming a new front against the EGP lead-ership.
(Osteuropa 11/2005, pp. 43–54)