David Picón Álvarez eleuteri@myrealbox.com writes:
I generally don't find myself sympathetic to the greens
FWIW, at the EU level, I greatly admire the work of the Greens. As well as supporting most of our positions, I think they have an excellent grasp on how to work effectively in their situation.
Their situation is that they don't have a big voting weight, and the EP's "Not in house" attitude makes it difficult for them to get their proposals adopted by the big parties. Thus, voting correctly is not enough to achieve their aims.
To their benefit, a lot of their policies are shared by civil society, so the Greens put a lot of work into helping civil society to lobby the larger parties. They do this by explaining the procedures, explaining the dynamics of getting multi-party support, pointing out relationships, providing computers/network access, use of photocopiers, providing physical access to the parliament, etc.
Lastly, they know that public cooperation with the Greens can sometimes hinder the work of civil society lobby groups (a conservative MEP might disregard a proposal if they see it came from, or is supported by, the Greens). So they often agree or suggest that their help should not be publicly acknowledged. So the people who see this good work usually don't talk about it.
Without the help of the Greens, the anti-swpat campaign would have been very different.