In fire-hit Greece, Greens struggle to be heard

In fire-hit Greece, Greens struggle to be heard
By John HADOULIS
Athens (AFP) June 20, 2023
Wildfires, floods and climate change have failed to budge Greeks towards voting Green for over a decade, but a new coalition hopes to break through deep-rooted scepticism in Sunday's national elections.

While environmental parties surge elsewhere in Europe, Greeks "view the environment as a little bit of a luxury," says Vasiliki Grammatikogianni, a co-chair of the Green and Purple alliance.

A 'Green wave' that saw environment parties achieve unprecedented success at the 2019 European elections "didn't touch Greece," admits Grammatikogianni, a veteran environment journalist.

"The Greek people were, and still are, preoccupied with daily survival," she says from the coalition's temporary base in a century-old hotel opposite the Athens meat market.

While Green politicians are coalition partners in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Ireland and Luxembourg, their Greek counterparts have trouble even getting as far as parliament.

That is unlikely to change in Greece's national elections on June 25 -- not a single environment party is polling remotely near the three percent threshold required to enter the chamber.

In contrast, Greens in Austria, Germany and Luxembourg won between 13.9 and 15.12 percent in the last national elections, while in Finland and Ireland they scored 7 and 7.1 percent respectively.

"For many years the Green parties in Greece have suffered from personal conflicts which led to internal divisions and marginalised us," says Vula Tsetsi, secretary general of the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament.

"We need to show how climate protection is not an additional burden on people suffering from inflation and the high costs of living, but a solution," she told AFP.

Including eco-feminists, pro-European Volt party federalists, animal rights proponents, Pirate Party of Greece politicians and other activists, Green and Purple is the official heir to over 30 years of Green party tradition in Greece.

Green politicians were actually part of the 2015-2019 leftist government of prime minister Alexis Tsipras, who took on Greece's EU-IMF creditors and nearly crashed the country out of the euro.

But the experience arguably did more harm than good, with the Tsipras government controversially signing hydrocarbon exploration agreements in the Ionian Sea, a key habitat for dolphins, loggerhead turtles and the endangered Mediterranean monk seal.

"It was a mistake that harmed the (movement)," says Lefteris Ioannidis, who was at the time a dissenting member of the Ecologist Greens party in the coalition under Tsipras.

Founded in 2002, the Ecologist Greens were for decades the most successful of Greece's pro-environment parties, in a political scene that often treats ecology as an afterthought.

In their best showing at the European Parliament elections of 2009, they picked up nearly 179,000 votes and elected a single Eurodeputy.

Three years later, they increased their share to over 185,000 votes -- but fell tantalisingly short of entering parliament by just 0.07 percent.

- Right or left labels -

Ioannidis -- formerly mayor of Kozani, a northern city long marred by lignite pollution -- says the Greek electorate traditionally sees itself as either right or left-wing.

In theory, Greeks should need little urging to root for the environment.

In 2018, over 100 people died in the coastal suburb of Mati near Athens in the country's deadliest fire disaster.

Three years later, a heatwave followed by wildfires destroyed 103,000 hectares (255,000 acres) nationwide and claimed three lives in a disaster the government directly blamed on "climate crisis".

But in the 2019 European election, a resounding Green success across the continent, environmental parties in Greece scored fewer votes than a celebrity ex-mayor who was on trial at the time over the Mati fires.

"There is a stereotype that Greens are only good on environmental issues," says Nikos Chrysogelos, who represented the Ecologist Greens at the European Parliament from 2012 to 2014.

Losing thousands of young professionals who emigrated abroad during the Greek debt crisis also hurt, he argues.

"But it's clear that Greens... also talk about people, society, the economy," the veteran activist said, who alongside Ioannidis now campaigns for Green and Purple.