 Hello, everyone. It seems we are slowly approaching the full capacity of this room, which makes me very happy taking into account the difficult weather conditions. I mean, I think the snow has surprised some of us. It definitely did surprise my Uber driver. Hello, everybody. My name is Agatha Gontarczyk. I am the head of the Europe and International Politics Programme at the Heinrich-Bösch-Stiftung office here in Warsaw. And it is my pleasure to welcome you to today's panel, insider insights from the Polish elections, how women and youth powered a progressive win in Poland. I am glad we have gathered so numerously in this room today. On the 15th of October, people in Poland voted for change, making an end to an illiberal and eurospectic, skeptic reign of Poland's law and justice party. These national elections saw a record turnout of 74.38%, with an unprecedented number of women, 73.7%, and young people, 70.9%, heading to the ballot boxes. Especially the turnout in between the 18 and 29 year olds was very surprising, since four years ago, less than 50% of the young people went to the ballot boxes. What were the catalyzing issues that triggered such mobilization? And what role did the green movement, in particular, play in shaping Poland's political landscape in that time, join us in the conversation and find out. I am joined by a fantastic panel here today, composed of politicians, activists, social workers, and, well, experts in their respective fields. Let me introduce to you Ula Zielińska, member of the Polish Parliament since 2019, a round of applause, co-chair of the Polish Green Party since 2022, who, in her parliamentary works, focus in particular on green energy and climate solution. Welcome Ula. To my right side, we have Lena Anna Kuklińska. Hello, Lena. A project officer for the Federation of Young Greens and since 2022, co-chair of Ostra Zielen, Sharp Green, the Polish Young Greens. Lena is an animal rights and youth participation activist, and during her internship at the European Parliament, in the office of MEP, Dr. Sylwia Spudak has also partook in the works on the gender-based violence directive and the promotion of the white paper on industrial farming. Hello, Lena. To her rights, we have Aleksandra Kołaczek, member of the Warsaw Greens and the Green Party Council. She is responsible for the programme, works on women's rights. Aleksandra has also long been an abortion and anti-gender-based violence activist, and she holds a degree in gender mainstreaming from the Polish Academy of Sciences. And finally, last but not least, Dagmara Adamiak, lawyer and social and political activist. In her work, she focuses on women, minorities and youth. In 2021, she established the Równie Foundation, where she currently provides free legal advice to people who experience violence and discriminations. During the 2020 free parliamentary campaign, Dagmara initiated the Campaign of Truth, to inform about law violations and encourage young people to participate in the elections. I could have not thought of better participants to invite to this panel, and I'm so happy to have you all here. Again, for those of you who might have joined a little later, my name is Agata Gontarczyk, and I work for the Heinrich Beuhl Foundation here in Warsaw. Now, without any much further ado, my first question to all of you, and I'm very curious what you will say, is how have those election results felt to you? What was your initial thought? What were your reactions on the evening when the results first came in? I'm going to start with you, Ola, because, well, first of all, congratulations on being re-elected to the parliament. Thank you so much. Well, let me start with a word on whether people before the elections were rather optimistic or rather pessimistic about the outcome. I have to say the mood was not so obvious in Poland. I had quite a few meetings with, you know, different green friends from different countries a few weeks before the final 15th of October Election Day, and everyone was pretty skeptical, and political scientists were also quite skeptical. There was a real risk that one of the groups or potentially two of the opposition groups were at risk of falling below the threshold. The thresholds in Poland are quite high, and the group we are part of, a coalition group, we are part of as greens, a civic coalition, was at some point almost campaigning for asking for people to vote for the other two groups as well, just so we don't lose them, because everyone knew we need all of these people in parliament to have any chance for majority. And the scale, the governmental candidates, the law and justice majority party in power, the scale of misuse of public funds there was in the campaign was just overwhelming for everyone. There were governmental picnics arranged, you know, every weekend in small towns and villages. There was this huge humongous social media campaign whenever, whichever website you went in, you got very micro-targeted adverts everywhere saying, oh, us law and justice, we did this for you in your village, in your street, we built the school, we built this and this cultural center, you know, we gave you a gym, blah, blah, blah, vote for us. Basically this was overwhelming. So we were really not sure about the outcome at all. And then how it felt, for me, it was kind of a feeling I had as a child back then, around 1989. I literally felt I couldn't be any happier. I thought, well, I'm in politics, but I could just as well, you know, retire from politics and just enjoy this moment. And then I realized I've got shitload to do still on green topics, so I shouldn't. But literally this week, Monday, Tuesday, we had the first parliamentary sitting. I couldn't help but just smile all two days. Like I could not wipe up the smile of my face, even though I know it will be difficult. I know there is so much mess to clear. I know the coalition government will be very difficult because it's many parties involved. But I don't care. I mean, there is, democracy is back. I mean, well, it will be back. So it just felt like an overwhelming joy. Nothing else matters. It happened. We're not having a third term of a party that just doesn't care about constitution, doesn't care about constitutional tribunal, justice system, you know, division of powers. We will have it back. So an overwhelming joy. So glad to hear that it seems like you're full of hope and full of energy. And I can only keep my fingers crossed that this continues until, you know, the work that you already have mentioned really, really starts. And I can absolutely sympathize with the sense of relief that you just explained. I knew I was invested in the elections, but only it was when the results come in I was like a huge weight dropped off my shoulders because suddenly you see the opportunity for change. Lena, do you share this sentiment? Was the realization for you that there's going to be a lot of work as quick as it was with Ula, or how did that look for you? So to be honest, I personally, I am an optimist and it's very easy for me to set my expectations very high. But then with time I learned that it's better to lower your expectations and not to get too disappointed, but also that it's just, yeah, to be a reasonable optimist. And then I always have this gut feeling that if I want something too much, it won't happen, so I should not count on it so much. And this was the same thing with these elections where, of course, there was a possibility that we would get the result we want, but it seems surreal. After so many years, my whole adulthood, law and justice, peace, was in power, has been in power, and it just felt surreal to suddenly have a different government, not have all these issues with democracy and this sort of style of politics that we sadly grew accustomed to in Poland for the eight years. And I remember I volunteered to be, and I forgot the name in English, but I was essentially a person. I went to one of the voting points to kind of oversee the counting procedure. So I went there, and I remember I got there, and there were too many of these people, actually. I went to the small village somewhere in Pomerania, and there were too many of these people. So I just sat down with my book and I was just waiting for 9 p.m. for the results. And a few of the people who identified me as a green, as a civic coalition supporter, they came to me and they showed me on the phone, we were just waiting, it was like 8.59 p.m. and we were just looking at the screen and then the results came in. And they just started jumping and celebrating, being very vocal in front of all the other people. And I was just sitting there being like, I don't understand what's happening. This is not possible because we wanted it so much. Why did we get it? And I think that's a good lesson for me to be a bit more optimistic still. But the realization that we have so much to do and what's happening came slowly with time. I think I'm only recently, I actually realized that this is happening, we are getting there. But what's important is to remember that even though we are getting our democracy back, there's still so much to do and still greens have so much to push for. And we need to remind the other democratic parties that there are the topics such as the climate change, inclusion, food justice, that still need to be taken care of. It's not only about getting rid of peace and depriving them of the power, but it's also about pushing forward our agenda. So Poland is not just restoring what we had before, but we are better, that we are going further. So yes, I realize there's a lot to do, but overall I'm still living for this happiness and this positive disbelief. Thank you for pointing out the engagement of many people who were persons of confidence and who added to the counting process and oversaw the lawful procedures. I absolutely share your optimism even though we should probably approach some issues with caution of course because there's many interests within the current coalition to be combined. But nevertheless, I would like to ask you, Alexandra, have you perhaps been also planning for a different outcome of the elections in your work? Can you tell us a little bit about how this journey towards the progressive win has felt for you in the past couple of months? Yes, thanks. I think, yes, I was happy that the Democratic opposition had the majority finally, but I was also very surprised by the result of the new coalition that appeared before the elections, Trzecia Droga, third way, as you call it in English. So it was a coalition of PSL and Polska 2050. Two groups, two political parties that are quite conservative and they gained 13%. And it was clear after the first euphoria and kind of celebrating this win it was clear that we have to strike a compromise coalition agreement with them and immediately it was a signal that probably women's rights and minority rights are going to be an issue with them and it turned out to be true in the coalition talks. So now it's a big question what's going to happen next. Of course we are still waiting for the final announcement of how the government is going to look like, what is the real shape of this coalition, but we know now for sure that conservatives have still kind of kept the influence even though it's not peace, it's Trzecia Droga and we still have to be prepared to fight our battles for women's rights and minority rights. And what a battle it is going to be. Right, one more impression from you Dagmada but I would be particularly interested in since you were the initiator of the campaign. For truth, I would like to know whether you feel like your work has been successful, whether it's finished or whether it's actually only just beginning. Thank you. First, I was so afraid that it won't be true and real and I really wanted to be real that we are winning, we win with this, with the law and justice. We really needed that. We young women and I was really afraid because we are not sure, we can't be sure. And now I am still not sure because I am not believing that this law and justice will just give up their power just like that and I am full of doubts about that but when this outcome I can see, I could see I was very happy and I was walking around in my work and said I am in a free Poland again because I am 27 so my adulthood is peace in government, in church. So just like Lena said, in 2015 I started my law studies so it was very hard to do my studies, law studies and see how my government not respect this law, this democratic, and in my law studies my professors said democratic is so important, it's so incredible, I think it's incredible. So I was, it was hard, it was hard studying in this time. So what did you ask about Campaign of True? I am so grateful for all of us, for all young people, for all women that we did it, you know, we did it. So I am so grateful and I am very proud of myself too. It's very important. You definitely should be. Thank you. I understand what you mean. I mean it's very discouraging to grow up in a society where apparently you are being targeted, you know, that your rights are being taken away and I mean we are roughly the same age, the three of us so I also when I was studying university my hopes were up very high, you know, for our future perhaps in politics or something like that and then suddenly you realize oh perhaps this is not necessarily you know the environment I want to be in or perhaps there's different ways I can approach this. So it's very interesting. Well we have had a round of impressions, some more enthusiastic, others still very cautious. I would like to now focus on the topics that have actually triggered such an interest among those two groups, the young and women that have led to this progressive wind in the end and I would like to start with Lena. Could you perhaps talk about what in your opinion were the catalyzing issues that triggered such a mobilization? I can speak for young people. Yes, please. I think that our generation, people my age, younger, but older, there were two things. First, I think they were afraid and that's something I can share with them that I was just afraid that nothing would change, that we would just get thrown deeper and deeper into this situation where everything can be done, there's, law is not respected, some people can do anything they want and there's nothing we can do about it and that of course affects everybody else and the prospects that Poland as a country has because I think it's really heartbreaking and that's something I particularly realized once I moved abroad from my studies and this was still before peace was in power. It's that you feel that there is, it's illogical for you to return to your country that everybody is asking you, why would you do it? Because there's things like this are happening and your life will be so much worse there if you come back and I think that's very heartbreaking because you lose your home. I felt at some point, of course there were different points of this but at some point I felt that peace deprived me of my home. So there was this fear that this would never be back to normal to this status where Poland was a developing country, a very promising country, a country of perspectives for young people but there was also another thing, there was the fact that young people were very much upset with what was going on so this was fear and kind of tiredness and anger that there are so many issues we should be focusing on but we are just kind of reversing, we're just going back instead of going forward and that boils down to the climate change, to rights of women, to rights of minorities, food security, a lot of matters that other countries try to cover better or worse but they are talking about that and we are just trying to defend something that's given to them, that's democracy, that's constitution, that's security, whatever. So these are the two things that really pushed people to do something about it because it really felt that this is the last moment to change something and I think that was also shared, that sentiment was shared by other generations as well that we Polish people realize that if we don't do something now we are going to lose our country. So yeah, I think these were the two things, of course everybody has their own personal story. I just felt that I cannot miss out on this moment because it feels quite hypocritical, at least for me, of course it's okay not to always be at the front and be very active because we all have different realities but I felt it was quite hypocritical of me not to try to do my best and that boiled down even to calling my friends who I knew were quite hesitant to go because oh well, it's a Sunday, I want to barbecue or whatever. That's usually what we say in Poland that people should go to barbecue, it was different things but me just trying to convince them to go and I was very happy to get a lot of text messages that day that yes I went, are you proud of me and I was like you should be proud of yourself. But yes I think also young people got this thrill of being part of something and that's very important for our generation as well that they could just be part of something, do something, something that turned out to be quite monumental. Something that turned out to be quite monumental a very fine sum up. What I was thinking about while you were speaking is that in the end those qualities that liberal or green movements are being accused of for young people, they're cosmopolitan, that they're not concerned with matters of nation and so on, it actually is quite the opposite, right? Because elections that turned out to be historic that gave the young people an opportunity to influence actively shape the future and to not as you said lose their country are exactly the proof of their engagement and of their commitment to building a sustainable future for themselves and future generations. Dagmar, I would like to ask you whether you would add something and perhaps also from the perspective of women. I mean of course the answer to that question might seem obvious but perhaps there's something you would like to highlight in particular in terms of topics that were crucial to the mobilization of women and also what in particular has changed perhaps in the motivations or in the level of engagement that we have seen in the recent years. Law and justice did really a good job that mobilized women and young people. Our job was to tell them to see them, to tell them what to do with this anger and with this protest inside of us. So social media was the most important in this job, in this to do this. So we as a campaign of true just tell the young, the women that we can change it. Our voice is the most important. This one voice can change it and I'm very happy that they believe, just believe in themselves in this voice. So I think it was the most important to tell them what they can do and to tell them your voice can change and we did it. So that's really great. So thank you for now. Yeah, absolutely. And I think being young women ourselves we understand firsthand what the importance is of access to our fundamental rights to medical procedures, which at some points might be life-saving. So this is not a mere matter of issues which sometimes are being discussed in politics where you do not have a full understanding of the situation. No, this is a very hands-on matter which might determine in the end the decisions you make later in your life. So that the end of this government started in women's strike. And these women just be there, protest, scream and go vote. Ola, a question for you. On a slightly different note because you're in a decision-making position in the end. In what areas do you hope to strengthen the possibility of green solutions, of green answers to problems that young people and women face? Of course your supporters, but also the people who might have not yet an idea of what the green movement is about and what options they are being offered here. We have a lot to do in every aspect of climate, government, energy transition. It's all, we all went backwards basically over the last years. We weren't particularly forward to start with in 2015. Poland was nowhere in terms of energy transition. Our air was toxic. And basically in the last eight years something has happened mostly with, you know, by private means. And people who had money they were able to buy technology and move forward. But the whole rest is still stuck and even went backwards because actually today if you think about the air quality in Warsaw we have probably one of the best air qualities in the whole country. When you leave Warsaw right now and go literally 25 kilometers you can barely breathe. And that's because the current still government used first COVID and then they used the war in Ukraine to take down almost all pollution, thresholds and basically say well let's take a break from this and you can basically burn and heat your home with anything you want except for the car tires. This was basically what was said by the leader of the law and justice party in public media and it was, and we had this huge catastrophe on our rivers, the Odra River. We had tons of dead fish flowing and nothing has changed since so this could happen again. So air is polluted. Water is really not in a good state. Energy is still based in about 70% on coal and we were until recently importing a lot of coal from Russia. Now is Kazakhstan, not Russia except you can't really tell the difference between the Kazakh coal and the Russian coal. So we're not quite sure where it's coming from. So there is that. But there is also all the social topics we just mentioned that are still very much not resolved and not necessarily clearly to be resolved under the current coalition. So there is huge work on our hands and there is just a few of us really. There is, you know, we have a small party, three MPs so we need to grow. Absolutely. And what is clear now is that this new coalition even though it's quite conservative because actually when you look at it, I'd say the majority of this new coalition is quite conservative, but there is an agreement that we need to change. We need to start fighting for climate. We need just transition. We do need to start protecting the forest. So actually we managed to write into this coalition agreement quite a few concrete things even though it was really tough and it was really tough to get a word in the edgeways and it was happening super fast over two weeks among so many parties. We have a statement that says we will take out or protect at least one-fifth of forests in Poland will not be logged. So we will stop logging in one-fifth of our forests and forests constitute one-third of this country. So this is quite a big commitment. The forestry company, you know, is sort of getting all like this when they read this and it's written plainly black and white in a coalition agreement. And we have a clear statement that the rivers need to be back to how they were before and not turned into water highways as this current government was trying to do to the detriment of the water quality and it resulted, among other factors, in this ultra catastrophe. And there is a clear commitment to replace coal ovens and furnaces finally with new low emissions and with renewables. Renewable energy, wind energy especially onshore was pretty much blocked for the last eight years with legislation that was just impossible to build windmills and that's going, this will possibly go in the next parliamentary sitting next week already. This will change. So a lot to be done, a great will to do it but there will be a huge role for us as Greens to actually make sure it's done because the way it's currently phrased in the coalition agreement which is very short and very, it's almost a set of highlights in the direction rather than a proper real, you know, coalition agreement, it's not in much detail. There is a lot of room to wiggle out of it for lack of a better word. So it's our role to make sure no one wiggles out of it. It's our role to make sure women's rights, it's not okay that they're not, that the right to abortion, the 12th week of abortion which is roughly what most of Europe has agreed is the basics of human rights, it's not there and that's not okay. So we have to make sure and it will be our role as Greens and the left to make sure we negotiate this. It's a job still to do. The pushbacks, what's happening on our eastern border, that's not okay, that's not human rights and that needs to go and I'm pretty, I know that it won't be easy with such a multi-party coalition that is largely conservative and this hatred towards refugees that was seeded into people during the campaign was just unbelievable. This is on our hands. So we have a lot to do. The challenge for us, because we have limited resources, the challenge for us will be to really focus and take it priority by priority, but we will do it and I think we're all ready for it. Great, great. There might only be three of you but remember you speak with the voice of at least all of the people who have gathered at the Green European Academy so I hope you will find the fierceness of the people accountable and to fight for all those things that you just mentioned. I will move on now to the second round of questions and of course the Green European Academy brings together people who dedicate their life, their time, their energy to being activists, to gaining knowledge, to networking, to meeting other like-minded people and I was thinking about certain skills that are of particular use, things that you have learned in your journeys as activists, as politicians, as people working in the sector that have brought you to where you are today and I was wondering whether you could share some of them but first of all I would like to ask Alexandra what do you consider to be the Green's movement, movement's strongest armor when it comes to the challenges that young people face today, also women and are there perhaps options that we are offering, ideas that other political options can't? Well, I think our strength is our program and our consistency because we are very clear like here in Poland but also when it comes to European Greens that we stand for women's rights, legal abortion, protecting LGBT people so I think it's clear that we are not going to change our mind even though we enter coalitions and we need to show that. The other thing could be also cooperating with the civil society which we as Greens are very good at and we gain a lot of knowledge but we also offer a lot of support like from what I'm aware of the regular meetings of our parliamentarians happen and there is a constant flow of information and so we kind of think together how to achieve our goals when it comes to animal rights movement or women's rights movement or climate movement. It's like we are on one side and we want to keep it that way, emphasize that we are reliable, you can count on us and we are not going anywhere we are going to stand here, vote also according to our programme always and fight for our core values. I think this is of particular value in times where you see changes in coalitions, in alliances constantly and at some point you're confused, you don't know whom to trust anymore so definitely a party with a strong moral bone is something that is very much missed those past years. Dagmar, how about the skills that have helped you get where you are today in your journey as an activist perhaps you could share a moment of God I wish I knew that earlier with us because I'm sure many of us have also gathered here to get some insight on how do I get started how do I get my own movement going and how do I get through to the people perhaps you could share some of your insights on that. I think the most important is to know that we have to use the right moment really, we can't create this moment because we have not that power we don't have these connections we just can answer for this moment that it's happening and use it for something that is important to us to this thing that we want to do this case and this when we know that this is the moment because sometimes you have to feel it you have to feel that this is the right moment that we have to do it for example it was like a few years ago Jarosław Kaczyński said that women young women don't have children because they are drinking a lot of alcohol so I sue Jarosław Kaczyński just myself as 26 then years old women just me I sue him and actually just a few months before elections it was came out so it was very important and it was I was there in parliament where this commission talking about Kaczyński should be in court for this for what he said and this man it was nine men old grown up men and me 27 years old girl they are just humiliated me for what I did for fighting for what I'm believing for voice of women and this was on our TV on TV so everybody see that and it was very very important I think to remember women how we were treated in this whole eight years of law and justice was in charge in power and it was this moment and not just moment you have to be brave you have to believe that you don't have to be someone very important you don't have to do a big movement be in charge in some party you just can't do things as you just be brave enough and I think this is what helps me a lot and of course social media and know how to use it I have a lot of people in tiktok so I teach young people because in tiktok we have a lot of young people about elections about how to vote you know so social media was very important and they are very important I always told young people that social media create for us some space that if you don't have you know powered money and connections you can use your voice just for people and they can listen because they want to listen to you so social media is very good to speak with people to connect with people to show them what you are doing this work, this stuff so I think this is the most important and of course cooperated with people with organizations social media is not for no reason called the great equalizer that voices apart that perhaps another circumstances would have not been heard and what you mentioned earlier the humiliation and so on the thing is you might be hurt and humiliated but then first you set an example and you show people hey the world does not end if you take a chance sadly we don't have too much time left and we will still like to take some questions from the audience I would like to direct that perhaps second to last question first of all how can we keep that mobilization amongst young people strong and secondly where is the young people's role in politics how can we contribute how can we convince or perhaps also you as kind of a voice of the young people in or somebody who consciously presents their position how can other politicians who are not as considered be convinced that this is not hysteria this is not adolescent outbursts of emotion this is real issues well I had a lot to say on this one but I will try to be brief well I think a lot of young people because there are some young people like Dagmata who really believe in themselves they have this power and they really can kick the door open and just go in and do a lot of great things but I think and I was one of these people that really needed a push needed an avenue where I can enter and see ok I can do certain things and that's why it's very important to have organizations like youth wings like Polish Young Greens for young greens and different organizations that attract young people and mobilize them and show them that there are ways to stay active and be active and this is very crucial to keep these organizations going to keep young people mobilized and give them new opportunities to be active and to just do what they believe in because it's very easy to lose young people among so many different stimuli, factors, things to do of course for young people we have school we need to worry about the job market so it's very easy to forget about certain things and that's why it's super important for organizations like this one like Polish Young Greens as an example or other youth wings and youth organizations to just attract and have the possibility to offer concrete tools and opportunities and that's where the parties come in where other NGOs come in young people need the support and of course again there are young people who will open the door and get what's theirs but there's also a lot of young people who will be met with this wall with this rejection, with this humiliation and will just be stopped and of course it's not about giving young people everything on a plate and be like hey, be here but it's about being treated like partners giving these opportunities and seeing that there is a reward that young people bring with it from some perspectives we bring knowledge we bring new fresh ideas and motivation young people first of all are incredibly optimistic and are eager to do, we show that with these elections that we are eager to do, we just need to have an anchor most of the time and just have an avenue to grow and to be mobilized and continue doing so as an advice that I will always give is to just treat us like partners and see the benefit of having us involved because if we are not involved it's like what happened to La Unjustice they underappreciated certain groups young people, women and they lost and that's what happens if you exclude groups of people from from what you want to do Thank you so much, hola What say you? I think it's there's two sides two things at least that we need on one side in Poland from young people we need them to stop being disgusted by politics and think if I want to change I will change something around me I will join a non-governmental organization because they are pure and nice and this is where my values align 100% and this is ok but politics is dirty, disgusting cynical and I don't even consider going there No, you have to go there to change it because it will never change if you don't try it don't be there trying to make the change yourself so you know be the change you want to see because this is how our political system works it's not governed by NGOs it's supported by NGOs but it's governed by the governments and the governments come from political parties and we struggle I can tell you after this election after all the previous elections I have taken part we struggle to find people to campaign and put themselves forward as candidates for all the good reasons because it's really tough as many of our candidates have found out some are here in the room as soon as you say something remotely a bit normal, modern progressive you say who you are you get this whole right-wing horrible propaganda media jumping on you to your throat really wanting to squash you you have to have a certain resilience to put yourself through it, it's really tough but we need to go there into the middle and try to change it but what we do need as a political party and as organizations supporting political parties and working together to support network for these people to be able to put themselves through it A, political campaigns are sadly still all about money you have to have money actually to run and in Central Eastern Europe I think the problem is common maybe less maybe it's easier in Germany because the Green Party is big there but in countries like Poland all candidates support themselves so they really have to save a lot of money and be prepared to lose it to invest it in a campaign that may just not end with a mandate and that's tough and I'm really looking for how can we create a support for young people to actually be able to afford this and then create a support network of groups and teams of people around them to help them through this really tough fight which is a political campaign so two things, we need them both and that's something that we have to work out as Green family solutions very concrete solutions because on the other side we have very well organized super well paid, very far right movements they're not always visible on the surface but really the money is flowing investment is flowing into people who are doing to our countries what these people have done to our country and we need equally strong networks to fight against that I feel like now we're getting to the really good and interesting stuff but maybe I will not take away, perhaps we can take two free questions from the room, I can already see a hand could I have another one, one somewhere there two free, all right, thank you so much the lady in the dark well, you found her Hello, it's Agatha from Generation Climate Europe I have two questions, thank you so much for your interventions, one is on the European Parliament elections so we have seen in the past that in some countries when we do have a certain perspective from the voters on one side that changes towards the European Parliament elections particularly those that are closer towards the European Parliament elections those are around half a year I'm curious what your thoughts are on making sure that we continue with the developments we've continued with mobilizing more people to particularly vote for more progressive candidates and the second question is around what we saw in terms of the results particularly among young people these were the most polarized results with young women voting for a majority of young women voting for the left party, majority of young men voting for the far right party that's a very dangerous situation that we're in not only now but also in the future and I'll be curious to know what your thoughts are on how we can depolarize the society that we're in in the context of Poland and also in the wider context of the European discussions thank you thank you so much I think we're going to collect the questions to make it quick the gentleman in the white shirt thanks thanks Jonas from Lithuania big congratulations again to getting democracy back in your country and my question is very similar with the question that we presented basically after every election participants, the campaign committee every people, every person in the staff of a party is very tired and in the perspective of the future it seems that there will be no time to be tired because the upcoming elections of European Parliament are like knocking on the door what's like the actual perspective, what are your goals and what are the ways that you will continue to reach them because from personal experience I know that people get tired and especially after these kind of elections where you have to fight and punch and be very resilient because it takes a lot of courage to do this and this like resilience is not unlimited, so my question is how do you see yourself in the future months till the European elections and maybe after that thank you so much and I think we had another question in the front thank you, hi I'm Marie from Party Party also going to the EU elections and also the local elections coming up because you ran as the civic coalition are you planning to continue this for the upcoming elections how are you planning to, if you're not balance your own profile with the coalition government work perhaps we can start with this question I think it was directed at you Ula can you hear me? thank you for the questions, good questions, tough questions as for the upcoming elections we probably will be looking for a coalition partner whether it's a civic coalition or another coalition partner we don't know yet but it would make sense the reason why we managed to have a majority now is because we work together so I think for the upcoming election we need to work together after that we need to stand on our own feet and always be prepared for independent start and I think this is my target in my mind in 2027 parliamentary elections, Greens will be running as Greens unless there is a real national need to team up again but that would be the choice we will make but the aim will be Greens have to be seen under their own label because we need to build this our name our label and we need to make sure people know about us and this is the biggest and first number one barrier in Poland for Greens to be elected there is still quite a lot of people who don't know Greens exist or don't know their leaders so that's just a very very basic job we need to work on I think this connects pretty well to the first question we had which basically is how do we create more momentum for liberal parties in Poland, in Europe altogether is somebody up for that question? Yes, I hope I remember the question correctly because there is a lot of information but on European elections something that the youth is doing in Europe for the European elections is very interesting I have the pleasure of working on that is the Federation of Young European Greens is creating its own campaign of course where we educate on certain topics that are important for us but also creating a program for young candidates to support them in their respective countries that's bound with training, that's about giving them ideas for their campaigns for their merchandise, for everything they need and just creating a group of support to make sure that they also and that maybe connects to the second question that they are not tired and feeling lonely in this this is something that Ula mentioned as well to young people but any candidate but young people in particular need extra support to just go through it and just really build this resilience and that's something that we are for instance preparing for the European elections to just make sure that we don't lose another opportunity another election that we manage to get more young people and set an example because this is also something important and something that maybe I should have mentioned but also in my previous answer what mobilized young people I feel that in Poland but also in Europe in general we see an increasing trend to include young people I think in Poland in these elections young candidates were more visible than before and that also motivated young people to go and vote and to be interested in politics because they finally saw themselves in politics so this is something we are doing for the European elections to make sure that we are talking about it but it's actually being done and the groups that have resources for it are supporting those who might not so much Sounds like good news to you Ula that there is some young people considering going into politics perhaps your wish will come true sooner than later okay and one last question that I could perhaps share between you two Dagmara and Alexandra what can we do to diminish polarization within society because this is a trend that we have been observing for years now where access to media is being leveraged where disparities are being enhanced on purpose in order to maintain a situation of confusion and misunderstanding that is being then used in order to to mobilize political engagement against somebody and against ideas not for something very destructively okay so my first idea and it's also what we are talking a lot where the Greens is education the education system was also influenced during the recent years by conservatives and now it's changed now there is a chance for a real change and civic education and also we need sex education for example at schools and learning also and teaching how to prevent fake news how to combat hate speech especially in the social media it's like I think no surprise for anybody here that activists and politicians are under attack and we need some tools to combat this but also what I think is a bit deeper is social justice and this is the reason why we have so many young men voting very extreme right and there are regions in Poland where the support for confederacy which is the extreme right party is highest and it's for example southeastern Poland and there is this combination of church influence but also this feeling that some people are left behind and I know that there is going to be a temptation to introduce austerity measures we have inherited huge debts after long justice rule but I think now that's also something we need to combat and also show that there is no acceptance for austerity and give chances to those who are feeling left behind and something optimistic I want to add about the Green Party because I am also a member of Warsaw Greens and we see that there are a lot of people who want to join us and I want to encourage everybody it is really refreshing to see this whole list of new members we would like to see more of that of course and I think that's the best and we see that after the elections people are happy with the result and they decide yes this is something we can work on and so the new members but also we are trying to take care of the members who are already there and this kind of event for example is I think really great and I'm really grateful to the organisers and that we have a chance like that in Warsaw to meet and to also see that we are not alone that those are common struggles all over Europe all over the world and kind of unites in this fight with others so it gives us strength and I hope that also new members thank you thank you I think this is a very nice bottom line Dagmar if you would want to ask a couple of sentences to that and perhaps close with a little I wish to see the green movement a year from now, five years from now where do you see us, how do you see us? I want to say just a little bit about this polarisation it's very hard work to change that, this polarisation about men and women and I think actually we can connect these two questions because I think it will be our job to find answer for this for this next five years and unfortunately I think it will be last more to find this answer and unfortunately I think it won't be easy and it will be more polarisation but now after this elections I think we should as a green we should start to see people how the country of our dream can look like we should end this thinking about what was like but start to show vision vision of this beautiful green open country for everybody where is social justice and we should do this and we can be different if we go this way we can be different than other parties other democratic parties as well in Poland because I think it's this job for greens to show people how it can be and how beautiful it can be and I wanted to do that to show young people, show women that we can do it differently without this toxic hierarchy without this hate so wonderful I think that deserves a round of applause also as a beautiful finish to our conversation thank you so much thank you to my wonderful panellists for bringing a note of optimism, hope and that beautiful vision of the future a vision of combining our forces and what we are good at in order to forging whatever we think is crucial and important and thank you to the audience for being with us and your wonderful questions have a great event and I hope to see you here again one year from now hello everyone welcome to the panel to the discussion called different politics green leadership and the 2024 EU elections we have three magnificent guests today representing one political milieu but different institutions and different and having different roles in the great great green family this will be from the green faction in the European parliament and with the British French background and political experience we have operations director at the European center for digital action whose mission for many years has been to raise the digital network capacities of the green activists, green politicians and green family in general finally last but not least we have a member of the Polish parliament for the second time already the first time coming from Wroclaw and actress by education but politician and activist by vocation now member of the parliament from the green party within the so called civic coalition we have a Polish English translation as far as I know Claudia here I would like to respond in Polish so if someone would like someone's needs then please use like the the device which is accessible there outside we do not have very much time because we are like 15 or bit more even minutes late and we should finish on time so I would start very quickly with a very very short a great very interesting series of articles published in the green European journal concerning leadership from the green perspective those are articles, those are interviews showing very different perspectives of that of the concept and of the practice of green leadership in Europe ranging from France via Croatia to Germany also dealing with more theoretical questions there's a lot of food for thought there so I highly recommend like to read the whole series of articles but I think that the two most important conclusions from the general conclusions from them one is that the leadership the question of leadership is highly should be always contextualized and not perceived in some abstract or theoretical terms because due to the fact that the political, cultural, institutional, historical context in each country look differently there are huge differences between the situation of politicians like Tomislav Tomashevich the mayor of Zagreb and for example the leaders and politicians of the Green Party in France and on the other hand like people like Robert Habeck or Anna Berbock leaders of very well established Green Party in Germany is that well the green mode of organizing party, organizing political action and specifically the green mode of leadership in due to the fact that it's aimed at transforming the world and transforming the world in a very systematic way it sometimes seems quite inadequate to the traditional structures of politics as they exist in the liberal democratic countries of Europe so it is always or very often it's quite hard for green leaders like to to adapt well first the question of adaptation itself to the system is quite problematic for a party which aims to to fulfill so many long term and deep political goals I would like to I would ask the questions to our guests in four blocks and the first one the first one would be the most abstract or maybe general and I would like to start with the question to Gvendoline Delbos Coffield namely how do you see the specifics of green leadership in the world which is at least in liberal democracy seems to be divided in like two great political not forces but trends actually where the one is like highly personalized populism and on the other hand there is some sort of technocracy and like do you think that the greens should adapt to that world or do you believe that the greens are able to propose a totally different kind of leadership and maybe you can show the examples where they do that already No, I'm not of those that think that the day the greens I'm going to take up the Polish translation in my ears No, I'm not of those that think that the greens have to have a radical way of doing and that they are going to change radically things either I think that it is it's not true for example that they have not been some honest true politicians in years before the greens arrived we are very much focused on anti-corruption and integrity we are not doing that but they were others before us to be very honest and I don't think also that before us it was all bad and we are going to be all good, we make a lot of mistakes too so no, I don't think so I do think that we and also it really as you said depends really on the countries I mean I come from a country where the presidential system means that it was more difficult than in others for greens not only because a presidential system and a constituency two round system, one person candidate are systems that don't help having more newcomers to come in politics difference to the Germans that have this proportionality system and all this but also because of course our more participative, more citizen based and more democratic ways of doing was less adapted to that sort of system so it is true that it is more difficult for us in certain contexts but I just think that the greens came with new ideas and it had been essentially where you had indeed already established parties and we just had to do our way now I'm going to be a bit nasty with ourselves but I do think that today we don't have that many excuses when we don't manage honestly I think that we've gone through the big decades where our ideas were not out there it was difficult to come in and all this I think that today often we're not at the level ourselves indeed, we're not professional enough we're not hard workers sometimes enough once we get into politics we are very hard workers left people are very good at going around everywhere and all this so that's when to go to power and once we empower I think we manage very well but we are indeed today the ones that everyone wants to hate so we will be at the centre of all the attacks coming from the left and coming from the right and this is true for our mayors all of our mayors in different cities have seen that when they try to do a change in urban planning when they try to kick out the cars and all this they will have everyone against them and not only the right wing so that is true today to keep the power once you're in place because what we are trying to do is so difficult we do have everyone against us and because we're also the newcomers and in a lot of countries people were used to the alternative between right and left and then there's these new people around but I don't think that we have adapted to power at all and to leadership like it's often been said but I do think that we should accept that we need to learn and in a lot of time we are proposing citizen based people or people that have never managed other people for example or they become MEPs with a team or they become group president so this is also maybe something that we are very very very very forward on content we have people that are very good at content and basically until a few years ago and it's changing we thought that managing people having leadership, convincing a room getting up and talking to people was not part of the training of a politician I think that's the big thing understand the next to the topic content work do we need to do we also need to learn how to be indeed good in leadership now I would like to ask Claudia Jahr about the what actually the Greens have to offer as a model of leadership in Poland which is well it's not obvious whether the Polish model of political leadership is the most traditionalist in Europe maybe not but nevertheless we have a situation in which the last 80 years were actually perceived by many commentators as a conflict between two alpha men meaning Donald Tusk and Jarosław Kaczyński where the leftist party has three head or for a long time had three leaders and those were three men in a country where the left is the most like has the most profile agenda actually most feminist agenda and when finally after the elections the coalition was forged between conservative liberal centrist and central leftist forces then this coalition agreement transparent for the first time was actually signed by five men sitting behind sitting like in a hall where the first woman there was the lady who was bringing the papers to be signed so yeah what do the Greens have to propose what kind of leadership in a country with such a model of leadership that is dominating well it's not just that we have a lot to offer we've already been doing that because yes three MPs may not be a lot for the Polish parliament but we are the green force the Polish Green Party has 100% of female representation in the same so there are the three of us the Polish MPs three women so only women represent the Green Party in the Polish parliament right now and this shows that what we've been fighting for for many years including in the streets is not just a slogan and I'm very sorry to say that sometimes on the left side of the spectrum it turns to be sometimes it has to be a slogan only so they fight for human rights but when push comes to shove it is the men who sign the agreement so we are not only talking about women's rights but this is also our practice and we make sure that the parity is there on every level and that women feel as well represented by us as men unfortunately we have to fight for it ourselves so it is the Polish women who took to the streets to show the politicians that if they want to win the election they have to consider they have to take women into account for the last election in Poland has shown because previously women tended not to vote as often as men did so in previous editions it was the law and justice party, the right wing party that won because of the majority of men voting in this election it was different we had a record breaking number of women and young people who participated opposition so far, the hitter to opposition has won the majority and very soon it will form a government of course I'm sorry and it's really sad that we have to fight for it so hard that we have to spend these hundreds of hours in the cold in the streets of large cities, towns, villages in fight for women's right in the 21st century but the Greens have been talking about it before it became fashion so in this sense we are very credible and I wish that our example and the example of Polish women fighting for the right is seen also on the highest level so that the men can see it and the men finally understand that we can't do politics without women anymore and it's not a conservative Poland even though it is my second term I still feel that the Polish parliament is much more conservative than the Polish society is and I feel very strongly about this I believe that the society has understood many things by now that the women have rights to decide about their bodies to make their own decisions that it's not that a politician or a judge can tell them how they should lead their lives, whom they should love what relationship they should be in whether they should have children or not it is for the woman to decide but the politicians still don't understand it there is high time for them to understand it and we, the Greens, especially the Green women are here to remind them of it the women leaders in Polish politics the female leaders are there but it's still that they have to raise their hands very high and say we are here remember us, use us this has changed to a large extent so the fact that on the candidates list of the civic coalition there was a parity but it is due to the pressure that we've been applying and thanks to the efforts of female politicians so that's the only way there is no alternative we need to put a lot of pressure we are here and our voice will not be taken away from us the reaction and the interaction is welcome I would now like to ask Wessna Jussup about the actually moving from what Claudia also said about the civic pressure because the history of the Green family of many different Green parties in Europe is the history of a challenge of at the beginning minority groups challenging the old establishment Germany is probably the most obvious case you have all those old parties Christian democrats, social democrats, liberals and then in the late 70s and early 80s come the Greens who have totally different mode of action another kind of political organization which are not which at least at the beginning don't want even to adapt to those old hierarchical structures or to follow the rules established by those old parties but of course with the time and with the rising amount of people being for example in the parliaments then they so to say become also those parties, those groups also become part of the establishment and if you are an establishment party or even a party in the government it of course provokes the situation in which the old school from the Green perspective so the radicals the radically new radical different kinds of organization they do not fit very well with the new situation so my question to you is do you still think that the Greens are able like to somehow to combine all those two modes of organizing parties and organizing political action so the grassroots one so to say the one from the streets from the assemblies and on the other hand the one that is associated with old school established parties with strong institutions strong hierarchies and professional, very professional ways of working I think the short answer is yes because we are all here and even though I'm sure if you are not a member of the Green party I'm also sure you wouldn't go to a peace conference on climate change so I think we are doing quite okay job there in a sense of a dialogue but I think the important issue here is to look at the leadership a bit from a different perspective because for me leadership is not about who is leading the leadership is about who is following and you cannot be a leader if you don't have a following kind of this idea that the Green leadership will be there just by itself because we have 200 members it's just not enough and we do live in representative democracy like it or not which means that some people need to be elected like we cannot elect 300,000 people to the parliament and that means that some people need to be elected and some people need to vote in that sense so like I just want to kill this idea that it's either politics or civil society because it's just not how it works and I mean you can have your own preference but you cannot ignore the fact that we need both then the second question is like how do we interact and then how much we allow each other and to kind of occupy each other's arena and where is that dialogue happening because once you know back in the days what you were describing in 70s and 80s this dialogue had to happen in streets and it wasn't really a dialogue because it was a protest against establishment and today we managed so I also want to kill this idea that now we are in a problem because we succeeded actually you know like we are not in a problem we succeeded like we put people in parliament that's a good thing we were happy for it so now we need to kind of go to another level to the next level of a dialogue and accountability and that's fine that needs to happen but kind of a pure okay now we have new people to hate like it's just sad that we have this mood present because it actually comes from our success and then the third level of it is that for me the leadership of the Greens and I really want to kind of go to follow up on what Gwen was saying like the question of leadership is not only about you know like how do you organize it methodologically it's also like where are you leader and opening new spheres and I think that's where the Greens are good leaders at the moment like I mean we will learn our ways on how to become good managers we have to learn and like how you know like do we have two spokespersons or one and how do we ensure internal democracies and so on we are showing leadership in the moment is the question of dialogue and like for example if you look at the process of building the European manifesto I think like there was also like a lot of research done on like who which political parties include civil society in building European manifesto and there's actually only two parties that are doing that you know and the level of how much I mean if you just put it on your website and you say hey you're free to comment I mean that's not a meaningful engagement in that sense you know then events like this I mean they're there and then like the fights that we still have to do and the challenges and all I mean that's all good I just think that like our job now is not to repeat 70s and 80s but to build on those and part of building on that is to acknowledge that there we succeeded now we have to go to next level so yes we want more than three you know MPs in Parliament now but we're not going to achieve that by destroying those three MPs you know and then the second part is also to kind of go further in a much more complex world on how are we contributing there and I think that like critique from civil society is also very valuable and it should be there and like we this is a pluralistic society and you know you can at the same time be in power and have a dialogue on the same issue with civil society where things are happening a bit differently and for me the most important thing is there that like there should not be fatalism you know like it's very hard because many of us are in this story since 80s even I mean not me but like some people and you know it's hard that now you need to acknowledge that okay another round you know needs to start but this is about contribution and then where I see the leadership of the Greens in that is that they give sense to these contributions in the parliament and when they're not in the parliament then they have to do it on the streets until they get into the parliament so moving to the second block of questions titled tearing down barriers out against would like to start with Gwendolyn the French situation because Vesna told us about focused on the case where we have as was my question actually on the case where the Green Party becomes in a way a victim of its own success in some respects and this is the German case when the Greens become part of the establishment and commentators would even say that they are the most established part of the establishment so like bourgeoisie and so on but I would like to ask about the French context because you said something like that if we come to power then we are quite good at it and you said you spoke a lot about learning different things but I think we know that the best kind of learning is learning by doing so can you elaborate a bit more where and we know where do Green politicians learn politics like in Germany and where do they learn politics in France like in a country where we have the presidential system well is it much harder like to become part for example of the state machinery where can you learn those things yes so about France it needs to be very clear that in fact we have been strong on the local level for quite a long time and it's not a new thing we've had local councillors for a long time we've had regional councillors for a long time and the national level has been usually difficult to get in because as I said it's a political system it's not as worse as the UK one but it's still very difficult no proportionality on the national level in any elections so that's where we always had difficulties we basically had every time to do deals but like you did in Poland we had to do deals with the socialist party in France to get our first MPs and senators it didn't go very well then we didn't have anyone anymore this time we did it in another context that you probably have heard of which was a gathering of the left forces from the very left from the very left from Mélenchon to the socialist called the Nupès and then we did get some so we do now have MPs MPs sorry and senators but on the local level where the local level where you do have proportionality we got there much earlier like on the European level you do have proportionality and we've had members of the European Parliament for a long time which also always showed what we really represented in the electorate on the local level we we basically the big breakthrough we had local little places and we had local councillors a bit everywhere but the big breakthrough was 2014 in Grenoble so this was the first big city that we did win and we win on our own with no socialist around us or anything in a very autonomous way it comes from a very long story I am part of this story so the before I arrived already in Grenoble they had been in the first greens to do autonomous so real green only green lists with citizens for a long time they first day they had done something that was very new at the time because for a long time the greens would go with the socialist at the first round to be sure to have local elector so the local councillors so they decided they would try to have their own list on the first round and then in 2000 what age am I 2008 yes that's it 2008 we decided that we would not even join the socialist on the second round and then we managed to get our own group on the second round and logically in France second rounds were only between two parties and then we were free that was the big breakthrough we had our first big mayor his election was followed and by every TV he also had TV from outside of France in fact Eric Piole and then in the first years he did a few quite polemic things like stopping advertisement in the city and that made even more some communication around it and then last time in 2021 we did with Lyon, Marseille, Poitiers and a number of other places but that was even a bigger breakthrough because we had big cities once we are there honestly I mean Eric Piole was re-elected in 2020 you would have listened to any person from another party they would have tell you he's going to lose everybody hates him everybody hates his policies about the cars in the streets and all this it's not true, he was very well re-elected that's why I'm saying when we are there and we do things and it's been awful, it's been tough people want to resign after two years because they are sick of being attacked all the time by their neighbors it's really nasty and I think that you're a number here having heard about it the very symbol of the car is very difficult so that is one of the things where we have a lot of problems and yeah it means that you need to be tough in these years I also think that we should remember when for example in the western context socialists arrived at power it was also very very difficult for them so the newcomers have always got that that was years and years ago but so yeah we getting good at it now we are in national parliaments and it's a new learning indeed learning to be a national in national parliaments learning to be in senate but I mean we have the content we have the base, they are learning it's not that difficult we have today the big difficulty of the media access I think that we all know that indeed we still have the problem that they are no media working on green issues this is really a huge problem in France we have one media that is called media part that is very good to tackle the establishment of power but they have environmental thinking but they really don't have a political ecology thinking they have an environmental issue so they will deal with it in a very specific way and I think that in all of our countries we do have the problems that we don't have media interested in these topics and putting us valuable showing our valuable work and all of this and traditionally it's always been the case the communists at their own newspaper the socialists at their own newspaper, the right wing at their newspaper and we don't have that and we maybe have not invested also enough time in that in having media that are friendly but I would say that in France today this is our major problem we can have months of discussion where we never even appear on TV, never appear in the major media and all this just to finish, when last time in 2019 we got in the European Parliament with 12 green members so the French delegation in the European Parliament is 12 green members the socialists barely managed to get six we were barely interviewed all the time and Le Monde and other big media like that go systematically still to the socialists, so this is how much in the journalist's mind it's still very anchored that you have the left and the right and we don't exist, this is today our big problem this was the example of France where the main barriers and obstacles were defined by Gwendolyn one is of course the highly centralized state political system on the other hand the media landscape now I would like to ask Wessna about a totally different country namely Croatia because we have a brilliant example of success I think of the green grassroots movement Zagreb Yenash which managed to win the municipal elections in the capital city of Croatia Zagreb with the mayor Tomislav Tomashevich and in a great article on that success that was published by the green European journal I remember the words by Mayor Tomashevich saying more or less something like that we are an island of sanity on the sea like of the old politics where it's nationalism neo-fascism sometimes corruption and so on and so on I would like to ask do you see do you think that this already few years of experience of governing the capital city of Croatia does it give us like some reasons for optimism in terms of whether the green movement with its quite radical transformative agenda can achieve success and for example stay in power without compromising too much of its ideals in an environment in a political, social environment that it's so difficult as in the case of Zagreb first of all I'm not from Croatia there's I think I saw Croatian participants here and I highly recommend everyone to explore the case of Možemo Zagreb and Aj because it's a very, very, very interesting case and I would say big reason for optimism in that sense and I think this story has so much to dissect on the leadership issue that we could spend another conference on it but I would start with the first thing that like Tomislav Tomasiewicz who is a mayor now he didn't just walk up one day and said I'm going to be a leader vote for me, you know, I'm the mayor now this is a man who spent more than 20 years on the streets, on the protests in NGOs, in different negotiations in academia, studying writing, traveling, being talking, you know like doing everything that we all here are doing and that's the leadership he's a genuine person who is what he advocates for and I think that's very, very important thing to kind of understand here that leader is not something that you go for a course you finish Coursera or Udemy course and then now you're a leader it's something that you practice, you learn you make mistakes, you're criticized you go over it, you survive, you go forward and so on and so on and I think like Tomislav and his story and it's not only Tomislav it's also other people from this movement show that maybe it takes 20 years but eventually when it comes to be it or not be it at the elections people recognize this kind of geninuity and leadership in a way and also there's another aspect of this that I mean green leadership doesn't happen in vacuum we don't kind of sit in a room create our own story and then we go out and then we install you know like it's not a rebooting system like we come and we inherit institutions mindsets financial constructs and that's where we have to move and a lot I mean I was also laughing a bit on this kind of explanation of German Greens and what they're facing now in the government and so on because you know like you have to understand when you take over the city you are probably going to find contracts signed for even a mandate after you know so like to change anything it's not that you only have to change what needs to happen in the future but you really need to kind of re-change the past and no one of us found you know a magical one how to change the past happening at least not quickly you know best case scenario you have two or three years to wait until you can actually start doing something and no voter is going to you know set the alarm clock to 2026 and then say oh now I call my mayor like they're gonna start criticizing you immediately that you're not doing what you promise so in that sense I think like Zagreb story is also the one that shows you know like how you have to hold the pressure you just have to hold the pressure because also you know the angry mob will not come and take you down just because in the first three months you didn't do everything you promise you have to have a good communication system of course and you have to communicate and lead the people towards this change and Zagreb was one of the cities where I think this was done very successfully with a very high price and it's not that everything went smooth but they managed because we are now in the situation where new elections are coming in Zagreb pretty soon and you know it doesn't look gloomy we don't have a situation where there's angry mob against the mayor even though he did introduce a lot of radical changes there and then maybe the third third point from there I think that one of the things that were very important for Zagreb and how this story was built to is international support and international movement because Zagreb was part of the European movement of progressive organizations for a long time there has been a loads of international conferences organized in this in Croatia where a loads of municipal learning was happening so again you know like these people were did not sit in a vacuum and say I'm gonna be a mayor of Zagreb now but like they for years and years learned what municipal policies are what are the best practices I'm sure that even like Grenoble mayors were in this academy showing the great examples for a very long time and these kind of exchanges and then there's also lots of institutions that support you and I'm coming back to my previous point that you know the Glyn leadership is about putting things together and kind of using the best resources that you have at your hand and you know buying time where you need while delivering a bit until you can actually deliver a lot so that at the end of the fourth year of your mandate or fifth or third or whatever you have you know you can actually draw the line and say not like look at what we did you know and then da da da da da da but like look how you lived three years ago and how you're living now and I think that's the difference and that's kind of a nice story that Zagreb will hopefully bring us at the re-elections Can I just have a sentence just to say that the mob of Croatia, so Tomislav and a few others, Yelena and the others, they came to Kronoble in fact in 2000 one year after the election 2015 and they did a study of three days because we had some common things, we fight it for getting back the water as a service public and they did also they fight there was a very big anti-corruption fighting because we had a very corrupted mayor for a long time and so this and I know well this example but there are others, the EGP the European Green Party try to organize all your foundations also try to organize because that was organized by Vedran and the Kuwait Foundation and just to say that this sort of exchange and good practicing learning by the others going to meet others in another country functions very well So, I would like to ask Claudia Hira as the member of the parliament and a member of the faction that consists of three members do you believe you can achieve what do you believe you can achieve from the green agenda in this government in such a complex coalition with it depends on how you count with six or seven parties actually within this three or four of them conservative actually and with a very well not such a small majority but still the margin is like a bit over a dozen of mandates in the parliament so with the constant threat of you know some sort of a shift of the part of the coalition in the wrong side do you have a hope like for the next four years that there can be something achieved, delivered from the green agenda with such a so to say relations of power within the parliamentary majority and within the government Yes, well this is why we are here as green MPs this is why we want to be part of this change that is coming so when we've been working in the fighting in the streets but also in the parliament talking about our green demands when we proposed legislation we did it in order to make them happen and not just I don't know let it go right now because of the complicated situation and it's gonna be easy in many situations we will have to find some sort of agreement between all democratic parties including those more conservative and those progressive but I'll give an example of one success it's a great success that many of the most important green propositions are included in the coalition agreement and it did not happen in a vacuum the fact that we have so many green parts or green propositions in the coalition agreement is the effect of our fight our fight as greens because these are our priorities I know that you've come from different parts of Europe so let me explain maybe you don't know it in many of its parts the coalition agreement is very general and it must be general because otherwise we would have to I don't know write several dozens or several hundreds of pages to explain everything so it is general but I'm glad that in terms of climate in terms of the environment nature in terms of rebuilding the Polish nature after the peace government because they have devastated everything that they could the waters forests no investments whatsoever in renewable energy despite all that we are able to include these elements we also were successful in negotiations about excluding 20% of most valuable Polish forests from logging and other economic operations it was not easy but we were successful and we were able to include these important priorities in the coalition agreement so I'm very glad about that and I can't imagine it any other way again the fight hasn't finished it's only just starting we are there in the same with our green values and we will appeal for the implementation we will make pressure also on leaders of other coalition partners so that they are implemented we want the green values to be present in every draft law in every piece of legislation that is adopted whether it is improvement of animal rights or repairing the Polish waters because 96% of Polish water bodies and rivers is in a bad or very bad conditions so it is a very low level we are starting from and we have to really fight for improvement in the last four years I was really committed to migration policies as well and I believe that as greens we should and will talk about it in a loud voice it is high time in the 21st century for human rights to be complied with including on the Polish-Belarusian border actually during the peak of the migration crisis there me and my colleague from the parliament had our office there in Biało Wierze but again it doesn't happen in a vacuum so we have been fighting for all these things before as an activist as a YouTuber as a person engaged in politics but from a very downed perspective I have been working on that already so it really shows something that close to our hearts before we didn't have the majority so we could only raise our voices and inform about the human rights infringements on the Belarusian border other things now we have the majority third round digital organizing Gvendolyn said that you mentioned actually among those barriers for the green groups in France this is the shape of the media landscape but some quite a lot of populist politicians not only them but I think they were the first ones here they actually one of the features of the populist politics in recent years was bypassing the traditional media establishment traditional media tools and this was not just about being not represented in some establishment dominated platforms but this was also part of the ideology so that the populist leader is someone who represents directly more or less the people without mediation of all those institutions experts media gatekeepers and so on well if you say that well the greens are not very well represented in the media the established media landscape do you think it is possible in some way to learn also from the opponent meaning like doing the same or doing slightly differently something similar meaning using the new to indicate with the voters directly without mediation of the establishment that is in many ways not friendly to the green agenda yes for sure first thing the first thing is I completely agree with you the populist the far right they were even forbidden for a long time in a number of places and they still managed to exist so we are not as good as them we are not doing that and there's a number of reasons that we will not copy paste I mean we will not be as simplest we will not go to the worst of the human being it's also easier to mobilize on the worst that is very well known because it's also today the model the economical model in fact of the digital world how does the digital world function and has money what is very missed what is very strong what is without nuances is what is clicked and because it's clicked it gets all of the advertisement and so that's why all of the platform and all of this they will they will go for that rather than for subtle nuance moderated words so they are saying that we can't completely copy paste but once again we need to manage to reach to the people so that's the first thing the second thing is I often think that indeed this question of being more charismatic, more pedagogical I also think that sometimes we are very technical it's very difficult to understand and and managing to get to the heart of the politics the narrative thing is very important on the migration topic very clearly there's an awful law at the moment that is discussed but once on migration it would be worse than what the polish wanted it's really very bad there's also and a lot of my colleagues in national parliament and senate were telling me yes we're going to stick to the facts and we're going to be very serious and we're going to show that they are saying lies I mean these people they're not that numerous there's not that many migrants so we really need to stick to the facts this is a 20 years ago the fact that each facts don't work on migration they just don't work because countries with demographic deficit are refusing migrants UK put awful laws and they have today a shortage in staff for London in pubs so if it was rational there's no rational about the fact of refusing migration so let's stop and I was very happy because I felt a bit bad saying that to my colleagues NGO and they and she said exactly that she said you need to work on narrative now we work only on narrative the NGOs we say stories of migrants we say stories that are nice or that are appealing or go to the heart so the greens are not good to go to the heart and that's very clear this was one of the big lessons of a number of the EGP we studied a lot the Dutch election one of the Bavière election and all of this where they worked on values and not only descriptive technical things so we do know a few trends that work so I think that we can get much better on that I don't like on the other hand when I hear we should be populist as the populist why don't I like it I think the very core of the populist thinking because it's been written I mean populism is as got its philosophers and writers and all this is to say and you have leftist populist writers that's somebody like Mélenchon in France inspired himself a lot from some of these texts and what these texts always say is that you have to create a divide between you and your enemies which is very good for a while but I'm not even talking here about do we agree with it or not to put some people in the society as enemies but it is it has also a strategical attitude at one moment and someone like Mr Mélenchon in France is meeting that they are as much French people that hate him than love him so there's just a moment where he's not going to be able to be the president of France because he has too many people hating him so populism doesn't work at some stage it works if you really go into a very aquatic system and I also think that that's also one of the story of peace I mean peace showed that attacking women all and making of the women enemies was the big big mistake so I really don't think that we should be a populist but we do need to learn from them how to communicate better with the others that is for sure and specifically on narratives and values okay so I understand that one of the main reasons why it's not so easy or maybe it's not impossible like to copy paste the populist strategy in the media is the fact that is the problem of complexity of diagnosis and solutions that are proposed by the Greens when Gondolin was speaking I came to my mind was a notion used by one of the interlocutors of Green European Journal I forgot the author of that quotation but the phrase was that there is always for every complex problem there is some simple, easy, clear and wrong answer which is the big problem for for the Greens for example who have to compete with such simple, clear and wrong answers to the complex problems I would like to ask do you think that your experience shows again that it is possible to organize and to communicate within the new media tools around complex diagnosis for complex problems without simple, short, clear, wrong answers I would be out of job so I hope yes but absolutely here there is again several ways to look at the issue one is like what do we want to say and how do we present it on the other hand we should also look into what people want to hear not in a popular sense let's do whatever but in what makes them feel safe informed and taken care of and that's it the reason why populists are successful is because they actually shine optimism they are saying terrible things but their messaging is optimistic they are saying negative, negative, negative but we are winning we are going to succeed it's going to be taken care of you do have us to take care of you and you don't need to do anything it will all be fixed so when someone reads that negative, negative, negative but the conclusion is it's okay these people know what they are doing these people will take care of me these people will la la la I honestly don't believe maybe I'm naive I hope that history will not prove me wrong I don't believe that everyone who votes for the populist is ideologically agreeing with them I really don't believe that there are thousands and hundreds and millions of people who sit down, take the programs if populists will have programs and they say this is my bible people usually vote with their emotion they bring decisions with their emotion and emotion which is kind of showed that in these days people really go for is A, safety optimism and I think this is where we need to learn so for me it's not about making sure that no one leaves this room until you understand chemical reactions of climate change and the numbers that we need to do in order to achieve it for me the question is if you're going to leave this room by understanding the gravity of the climate change and if you're going to understand what's the job of politicians and what's the job of civil society in this role and if you at all have an idea what can be your next step in fighting climate change and you know like this is a matter of conversation, this is not a matter of textbooks numbers, experts, I don't know what so in that sense yes, the second question here is the question of the medium and like the technology in itself and my honest opinion is that progressives are fairly technophobic these days and there's probably different reasons, I don't have all the possible research on this but I think that we are very much mixing the discussion about technology as a medium and technology as a thing that needs to be regulated and technology as policy that needs to be developed and technology that needs to be developed in such a way I can count on fingers, programmers who are in the greens or in progressive movements they don't find space here, why and in that sense I think that we very often come into the trap that when we are discussing technology and mediums and campaigning strategies and processes, we actually end up debating policies around technology and that's a completely different debate and it's not useful because in the end you're going to conclude that you're not going to do a facebook ads because you really don't like Mark Zuckerberg which is good for you but that also means that your policy is going to be seen by 200 people and not by 20,000 people and if you're fine with 200, good for you continue hating Mark Zuckerberg and I think we need to have policy discussions on technology, we can just not have them while we are discussing our strategy and outreach because then this is going to be very much in the clash. Before we move to the Q&A, I also would like to ask Claudia Iahira about her experience with the policy and politics actually made by with the digital tools there is a strong stereotype in Poland that well, those are the young nationalists those are the guys that can do well within the internet and the leftists do not partially maybe due to the reasons that Wessna mentioned although just one remark, that's a funny thing the Polish leftist party is actually by education he's a historian but by his job he was a programmer for many years. Adrian Zandberg okay okay, so do you believe the question to Claudia do you think that the stereotype is somehow true in Poland or not anymore? I do not think it's true I do not agree with you and those who do not know my history, my background let me tell you that I started on the internet I started my activism on Facebook so I'm fully aware of how it works I started in 2015 right after the law and justice party became the ruling party for the first time I wasn't a member of any parties at that time and I just started publishing videos on Facebook and on YouTube since 2015 it was a time when you did not have to pay for advertising your videos to gain audience it was possible to grow in an organic way and to gain followers and I just did not agree what the nationalist government in Poland were doing at that time and I started talking about it on the internet and I did that just like that that had nothing to do with any political parties and then we took it to the streets so there were protests all over Poland but I started travelling around Poland I started meeting activists, people protesting, we had that committee for protecting the democracy so I do not agree with you, I think that this is our strength being active on the internet. I think that some of us are actually using these modern tools especially the younger ones if you do not want to do that old fashioned politics if you are a young person serving as a secretary or as an assistant so that sometime after many many years you can be actually a candidate for that party then you should start on the internet because you can be very independent and you can talk about the values that you believe in in an independent way you do not need to serve as an assistant for a senior colleague in your political party and it is also a good opportunity to tell people that the populists are lying to them you can show that fake news is fake news and we have had that good campaign recently and people needed that optimism and I needed that optimism myself and I was able to see how well this was actually working what we were doing on the internet and I used even the language of my political opponents they were referring to the Bible and they were saying that they were just carrying the good gospel and I was using the same thing and I was using that same word and I started my statements by saying this is some good gospel for you and I think that the green values that we stand for that is the good gospel and of course the populists are trying to make people afraid of the green transformation and we need to make it clear when we talk to people and that's what I was doing all that time we need to explain to the people that the green transformation is the best way for them to live their lives they will live in better cities with better public transport with more green areas and that the air quality will be better than the energy will be much cheaper so the living cost will decrease and they will be able to get their kids into a kindergarten that's all and to be honest with you the Polish populists make people afraid they tell people that they will need to eat insects for example we had two months in Poland when that was the main political topic the populists were trying to tell people that the green politicians will force people to eat insects instead of normal meat as they see it so we need to set that straight car away from you we will just make the public transport so good that you will prefer using the public transport than driving your own car so that's how we created positive message but it's not possible to create that positive message just by talking to people live face to face you need to do that on the internet so that you can reach more people so I encourage you to use all the possible channels just tiktok as well if you are not present on tiktok only the confederation confederation party will be present on tiktok and that would be really a bad situation I know it's much more difficult to grow on social media in an organic way but we should try to do our best to achieve that I was told by the organizers that we should finish on time which means that we have very little time are there any questions short comments short questions one, two, three sorry but we really don't have the time thank you for the opportunity just thought of this question right now after your intervention tiktok uses a very specific kind of language very different than the usual political parties language what do you think should be the strategy of the green parties around Europe regarding the usual tiktok language to reach the younger audience first we collect the questions first we collect the questions then okay one I am from Denmark from Green Left party there and I am preparing campaign for Rasmus Norgfus he is in the board of European Green Party we have some plans I will ask if plans are made like that in other countries and other parties to find and invite good international friends to his campaign European campaign and start already early invite green people politicians and so on to Denmark to meet with him and to have meetings by inviting people from abroad we have a greater chance bigger chance to to interest the press and be sure this is not only a national election SF Green Left and Denmark is an international party we have a guest from Netherlands we have one from from France and so on that is a new way to make a campaign of course he cannot invite those who are running for MEP in their own country and he wants every minute every second to get re-elected for instance but he took part in Polish national election and we could invite someone from Poland is that something that you are planning or thinking of and do you think it's a good idea and the third person was something great thank you I just wanted to refer to some words of Wessna as I felt kind of really concerned as I thought we are talking about really different politics so we function in the model of representative democracy whether we like it or not and that's exactly what concerned me because there are also other models of democracy and people just don't really know about it and about them and still don't experience them in practice on a larger scale and as my main field of expertise are democratic innovations and in particular alternative models of democracy such as participatory, deliberative digital or participatory democracy I find it extremely challenging to reach the mass awareness about the thousands of alternatives that already exist and countless of examples of democratic innovations from all around the world so I see there a huge potential also for the Green parties to be the leading promoters of these alternatives and this is also an open question whether it's really like is it just my hope or it's really like that as I feel that we can also we can promote not only alternative models of economy but also in politics and that's also related to building positive narratives and thinking in general out of the box yes okay so now whoever feels I would like to respond, okay I would like to say something about Tiktok can I? yes indeed we have been on Tiktok during the campaign as the Green party and also personally as myself I posted on Tiktok and I tried to pick some things that could maybe work on Tiktok of course you don't win the election on Tiktok and it's really great, it's very fortunate that you don't win elections there because actually the results and the number of votes that confederati received was relatively low and yet on Tiktok it was successful but Tiktok gives you an opportunity to make people interested and then you can use this interest to really communicate about the actual content of your program for example what works on Tiktok very well the Greens and Poland support a legalization of marijuana in Poland if you don't know marijuana is not legal and it did reach young people and we are open in saying that we support the localization and it really reached a lot of users people started following us and then we could use these followers to really post films, videos that focus on green values but they wouldn't have been as successful as they were if it hadn't been for this first post that stirred a lot of interest, the one about marijuana and it worked on my profile as well when I posted about the debt that the peace party put us on and I posted this sort of actually bill with the amount spent by peace and I think about one million people saw it and thanks to that later I was able to communicate a message that was most more important for me obviously but first I had to catch people's attention so yes we must use it but I can't thank you I would like to raise 2 quick reactions on the Tiktok I just want to say that we don't need to learn Tiktok from conservatives there's fairly enough progressive knowledge on Tiktok and other technologies so like it's really not about going to Kaczynski and asking him how to use social media or whatever examples beautiful smart experts on social media, progressive media, digital organizing and everything from progressive side that know how to help not only how to create a good content, not only how to create good strategy, but also how to do a transition from a non-digital way of doing politics towards a digital way of doing politics. So I think we have a horse for that race. We just need to decide to run a race. The second thing on representative democracy, I do believe in like huge power of democratic innovations. I adore different ways of exploring and finalizing the democratic system because our democracy is work in progress, democracy is never over because new generations of people are always coming and it's always changing and system has to serve the people, not other way, you know, like, we cannot have a rigid system where we ask all the people to fit in. So in that sense, democracy is something that is live and to be developed, but it's a constitutional question, like elections are there, you know, parliament is there. So we do have representative democracy like it or not. I'm going to say it again. And then the question is, what can we do to do more than that? And democratic innovations and many different systems, I think they should be studied, they should be practiced, they should be, you know, tested, they should be kind of micro done. There should be also like, you know, like a ways to learn what's best out of it and then we live through it and we improve it and so on. The only time when I get very emotional about this is that alternative models of democracy cannot become excuse for not participating in representative democracy just because we are losing. Like we cannot tell to the people and we cannot live in our organizations and we cannot, you know, grow the generations of young people saying that like, there is plan rooms, there is for us, there is all of this and this is so beautiful and nice. And then because in, you know, in real life and every four years we don't have this, then, you know, like we don't, it's not worth of, and I know this is not where the comment came from, but this is where very often it comes in. And then we derail people from voting, we derail people from, you know, understanding what's the responsibility of members of parliament and we create sort of a parallel understanding of regular democratic system which leads us to a condition where, you know, we start fighting among ourselves instead of supporting people who are representing us in a constitutional, like a state constitutional system in the parliament there. And there I draw the line. So for me these are two different discussions. Yes, so just to say that I do believe a lot in, as I said, going to other places to learn about a good practices in other green parties, for example, I think for a long time a lot of our national people, for example, I mean, we had a bit this idea that there was the European green bubble where people would meet, but then the national ones, they were another world and we have a lot of problems today. We are getting into governments. For example, we have a lot of problems to coordinate our people in government and this is very problematic. The social democrats, they are coordinated. The right wing, they are coordinated. And our greens never want to take the time to coordinate. We were in four governments at one moment. We couldn't have them to coordinate one hour from time to time to say the same thing at the council because for the moment our national level thinks we need to act on the national level forgetting that if we don't act on the European level, it will be problems for the national level. And I also think that indeed it's also very interesting to invite people if it serves a purpose. What we did a lot, for example, in the last week of the famous Grenoble election in 2014 is that we brought mayors from other cities because we never had a very big green mayor. There was a bit this idea to install the idea that you can be a credible green mayor. I think that there are times like that where we had emerging parties like the Croatian or others that we send a lot of people to to show that they are connected to a number of other greens outside and even more in fighting context, like Karacsoni in Budapest even more needs to have people to come there so that he can show the Hungarians that it's not just him against all of Fidesz, he has people around him. So that was to answer, I think it's always a good idea to make these travels and on the representative democracy. So I completely agree with Vesna that we need to invest the representative space that we have and we cannot just say we will just take care of the rest. So we need to invest these places because if not, there will be never feminism, there will be never diversity. I mean, we are the one bringing diversity and the one bringing feminism. We are the one also showing that you can have another way of keeping the power. I think that we need to show in cities but also in national parliament and in European parliament we are the ones that can change our people and still the politics stay coherent and it's useful because we have in the European parliament people that have been there for seven terms. I mean, it's basically since the parliament exists. It's just so crazy. So you have these Bulgarian guys, they were not for seven terms because Bulgaria arrived later but you have these 90 years old Bulgarian guys that don't seem interested at all in what we do but they're still there because they've been the candidate for their party for years and years. So if we make all of these changes in the representative if we want to make these changes we have to be there. So it doesn't mean that we don't fight when we're there for all these democratic innovation. I hope tomorrow, it's really not there for the moment but I hope tomorrow for European institution and a European bubble that manages to do very regular European conferences with citizens like they did this time for once. They were amazed by the result and I would like the European institution to put much more money to have on a regular basis this sort of European citizen participation, meaningful one, not just people that you ask a question to and that they can influence the vote, they can make opinions on what we do in European parliament or in European commission. They can even vote maybe on what we do. Think that there are a number of things that we can push but it doesn't mean that we have to indeed leave the seat empty in representative democracy and then just to finish, we also need to get representative democracy better. It's not just, you know, there's the pure great parties and democratic innovations and party of democracy and the bad representative democracy that we have to go free because that's where things happen but it's really bad. It's not true. I mean, I believe like this that there will never be a world where we all take decision for the public sphere. They will always be representative democracy and if in this democratic representative, for example, you really listen to civil society, you really care about civil society, you really take the input and work with them and not once you elected, you just forget about what civil society was saying, then you are improving representative democracy. If you really try to fight the patriarchal system once you're in it, I have an example it was said earlier but you know, some topics are still so male. Industry, energy, where the money is, it's all male even in our green groups. It's how the big environmental files on the European level, the big climate files were all men. So we still have a lot to do for that and to finish, we also have a lot to do about being courageous in this political sphere. Still today, we're representative places are places where words are very nice, we never say the truth, we never are bored about what we say. Apart from the populist ones, they say awful things. We on the other hand always say very bizarre consensual things. This is also a place where we can be courageous and bring indeed these spaces to be much less conservative in the way that they are organized. Well, just a few final, very few final remarks as to the old guys sitting in the parliament. Well, still it's not so bad in the European parliament. In the previous term in Polish parliament, we had a member of the parliament who started his political career by joining the Polish United Workers Party in 1971. And actually in the United States until recently, very recently I think we had some senators who actually managed to vote against Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, guys who are now like 100 years old or something and still sitting in the Senate or until very recently. We run out of time, so we do not have time for the fourth question about the coming EU elections but nevertheless I would like to recommend in early December will be the new issue of the Green European Journal, will be published, dedicated exactly to this question, namely the green vision for Europe for the next EU parliamentary elections. Thank you very much for all our guests. Thank you for coming here and asking questions and staying with us until the end and hope for fruitful discussion like behind the scenes. Thank you. And of course, thanks to our amazing translators, I don't know if translators translate the thanksgiving for them but nevertheless this was great what they did. Thank you. Okay, still waiting for the last people who come in the room but thank you very much for being there, being there through out. My voice did make it until the end almost. As any good story, same with an academy and the closing is really important. Important to close a moment that we spend together. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I hope you learned, I hope you met, I hope you were inspired, I hope you debated because that's what we do. So I'm really thankful for all the participants to have been so active. That's what I've heard mainly, speakers, participants, it was very vibrant, that's what I heard and that's always obviously very hard feeling. We have started with very inspiring keynotes. At least that's what I experienced, I hope you experienced the same and we will close with as inspiring keynotes as we started. We'll have three persons, we selected them, we're very thankful for them to be here. And then we will have, because it's important to close an academy properly, we'll have a bit of a feedback moment, don't worry, it's not gonna take ages, but it's important to be able to say what you thought and we'll do it in an interactive way, so therefore it's not gonna be me. And then we'll have some short closing address together with me thanking again everyone. I would like to have with me here, Alice Dollmayer, Julia, sorry, I'm losing my, and Agatha Messner, please and join me here. And thank you for the round of applause. They can see you on the screen, but I would ask you to come here to the podium and I'd like to ask Alice to start with the key. Hi everyone, I hope you had a fantastic weekend. I'm very happy to be with you here today. For one of the keynote closing speeches. So I agree, it's important to take away something home with you and of course you will have many sessions and exchanges that you can think of, but let me also bring you something. And I will start by telling you my personal story on how I came to found an NGO called Defend Democracy. As a young professional from the Netherlands, I moved to Brussels in September 2012. And because I had no experience in one of the Brussels institutions, I hadn't done a traineeship at the commission nor at the European parliament. And because I wanted to establish myself as a freelance consultant on European energy and climate policies, I thought, okay, well, so I mean, how can I create some more visibility for my services? I was passionate about renewable energy and because I had worked in a green energy company in the Netherlands on an energy transition. And I thought, you know what, maybe I can use Twitter, which at the time was still a very decent digital platform. But that's another discussion. So that's what I did. And, you know, being Brussels, there's tons of so-called policy debates. Really, on just the topic of energy and climate policies, I could go to several policy events per day. So I would really go to many of these events also for networking. And I thought, you know what, maybe I can live tweet as a journalist to quote some interesting discussions and highlight the news or what people said, which I thought would be helpful for more ambitious energy and climate policies. So that's what I did. And before I knew it, because this was relatively new to do so-called digital advocacy in the Brussels bubble, that way, before I knew it, I was apparently the most influential Twitterer on European energy and climate policies. Now, I also tweeted not just about energy and climate, but also about the broader geopolitical context because I felt that very often I could make stronger arguments for why we needed more ambitious climate targets and energy efficiency targets and renewable energy targets. So you probably know this poster, more sun, more wind, more peace. Well, basically that was my message, but already in 2014. At the time, I was relatively a lonely voice, but I was an influencer, so it was a pretty strong voice. And I was very critical, for example, of Gazprom and our dependence on Russian energy. Well, apparently the Russian troll factory didn't really like that, so they attacked me. Luckily, it stayed online, but it was something very, very unusual. It was new and I had no idea what was happening. And luckily, I was in touch with a Finnish journalist who later wrote a book and she taught me that there is such a thing as Russian propaganda. And I started to educate myself on propaganda, on so-called political warfare or sometimes it's called active measures or hybrid threats or even sharp power. There's lots of many different concepts and they all mean something slightly different, but I think you know what it more or less means. So this is what happened in 2014. And over time, I got increasingly concerned about our democracies, because being closely following also digital developments and because after the trolls from around 2015, there were also bots like automated accounts. And there were the first stories about algorithms and Cambridge Analytica and micro-targeting. And I connected the dots between foreign interference in an increasing number of our elections and those features that digital platforms have. And I thought, this is going to be a huge, huge problem for democracy. That was around 2016. And I didn't see a response, not for my governments, let alone a coordinated response at the EU or at the NATO level. And I looked around and I didn't see an NGO working in this area. Yes, of course, there were like the first fact-checking initiatives, mostly on a national level. Some people started working on cyber security, also very often on a more national level, but no NGO, no civil society organization that would kind of look at these, look at the bigger picture of democracy. And because I felt that was at stake. So that's long story short to why I founded different democracy. Now, our mission is to defend and strengthen democracy, not just against the foreign threats, which I just explained, but also against domestic threats, which are about polarization and democratic backsliding, which we are seeing in pretty much all democracies around the world. And also against technological threats because our current information space is already broken, but with new and emerging technologies, this will get exponentially worse. And what is really important to understand is that these three types of threats, so the foreign, domestic, and technological, they are not separate from each other, but they are interconnected. This is really important to understand, also for our leaders and policymakers. Now, from countries like the Baltics and the Nordics, I pretty quickly learned that for the so-called, let's say, hybrid threats or the foreign threats, one of the ways in which to address them is to build what is called whole of society resilience. So that means that the answer cannot just be from the military or from the government, but that you need the whole of society to be prepared and to be ready and to know what to do in case of, for example, multiple crises. For example, when, let's say, both our internet is attacked or our communications channels or our gas or, let's say, energy infrastructure, basically it is about being prepared as a society and not just wait for the government to do it for you, but to each play a role. So that means that in those responses and in the defense, like the proactive defense of our democracies, civil society has a role to play. And I know that, you know, obviously everyone would prefer that there is no war and that there is peace and that we don't have to, that we don't need to think about those difficult questions. But sadly, it's not up to us to decide because Russia has chosen for war and not just Russia. I mean, also China and increasingly and other mostly authoritarian state actors are trying to undermine our democracies and to divide our societies. So we as civil society should be not only aware of this, but we have a role to play and we should take that role. We should not leave security and geopolitical strategy just to conservative parties and conservative thinkers. No, as progressives, and I count myself as a progressive, which in some countries is becoming a nasty word even, but progressive just means that you are for progress. So we should reclaim the space. We should reclaim the debate on security and geopolitics from a values-based angle. So if we want that human rights and rule of law and democracy are the founding principles of the European Union, if we want those values to remain respected and forced and strong, then we need to defend them. We need to be ready to defend them, even if that means that words and diplomacy may not be enough. I'm not sure what time it is, but I think I've spoken long enough. I can tell much more, but... I will ask you to conclude, but this was a great wrap-up of the last two days. Fantastic. Good. Then leave it at this. Thank you. Thank you so much, Alice. Thank you so much. It did sound at times as if you designed the academy. Julia, thank you so much, Alice. Julia, thank you. Hello, good afternoon. Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm very happy to be here. My name is Julia Valdanez. I'm a member of the Spanish Parliament for SUMAR, a new political platform formed by 15 different parties, many of them regional parties, which is defined as a green progressist political project. I'm especially happy to talk here as I was member of the Catalan Young Greens when the first time I heard about the European Green Foundation. And since then, like more than 10 years ago, it has been a kind of like source of reflection, source of like political debates that has like no reach me during all these years, no? But also, I felt it even closer when I started as a EGP staff member. I was working for the European Green Party for five years before becoming an MP. So it feels like being back home, except for the weather because, I mean, this like Mediterranean route like snowy and cold, but well, actually in Barcelona we are 18 degrees, which is not normal neither, so. And yeah, I'm happy to bring here the Southern perspective through the Spanish experience and actually also because probably the Spanish and the Polish elections were the most important ones in 2023 and the most important thing is that we succeed, we manage to block the counter, the far right. So I will talk about the current situation in Spain after we had these national elections on the 23rd of July. And actually we managed to build an alternative majority to the one that everyone expected that would win, that it was the conservatives and the far right. And also I would talk about what we have against us. So also we are happy because two days ago, a Spanish parliament voted for another term of a progressist government. After months of negotiation, the social democrats and us, Sumar, are building a new executive. It's going to be the second coalition government since the restoration of the democracy in 1978 and it has a clear mandate. Consolidate and expand the rights and freedoms achieved during the last four years, as we did many, many things. In the last four years, Spain has increased up to 1,080 euros, the minimum wage, which means an increase of 46%. It has changed its labor law and since then, more workers have a permanent contract which means less precariousness. It has adopted the first climate law to achieve climate neutrality in 2050. It developed the first riders law in the European Union, which recognizes riders as what they are, employees, not self-employed. It adopted the Fourth Autonomous Law in the world because we not only deserve the dignified life, but also a dignified death. And moreover, a Spanish government has been in the forefront of the feminist and LGBTQ policies, adopting an ambitious trans law, which allows self-determination, but also a constant law which establishes that only yes means yes. This is what we have been doing, also fighting the cost of living crisis, the inflation with expensive economic policies instead of the old neoliberal austerity recipes that in the South we know them very well, which have been proven disastrous for all, except for the rich minority. It has not been easy to build the majorities to have this new government. The current government is supported by four parliamentary groups. It has been an exercise of dialogue and negotiation to arrive to this consensus, but Polish parties also know a lot about the importance of building compromises and agreements. But while these conversations were taking place, hundreds of people in Madrid and other Spanish cities were taking the streets and attacking the headquarters of the Socialist Party, fasted songs and slogans and constitutional flags, posters signaling and suggesting attacking some MPs, and the most released one, dozen of inflatable dolls that represented the female ministers. These demonstrations, lit mainly by men, were not truly about how in danger is the constitutional system in the hands of the Socialist Party and Sumard No. It is about the fact that their idea of the true Spain, the traditional and patriarchal one, where women reminding the private sphere while non-normative men such as gays or migrants are excluded, it's not anymore the country that we have. These people in the streets want to go back to our darker, fastest past. Since Franco dictatorship was finished, many generations have built a country where there is a space for everyone, where social, civil and human rights are everyday strengthened, where democracy is everyday a bit stronger. However, this plural Spain that the progressist government defends and expands is not well accepted by the far right and the conservative parties. Actually, they are the ones fouling or even participating to the regular but also violent demonstrations. These politicians are calling the parliamentary majority illegal or that it wants to establish a dictatorship. The popular party won the elections, yes, but they only could build a majority with a far right and no one else gave support to this option. Therefore, they countered the results with all these worrisome claims, while the usual suspects also fouled this feeling of illegitimacy. Who are they? Some judges, the same that prevent to change the government of the judicial power even though their mandate expired five years ago. The charge, the same that accused the ombudsman of being a liar after he conducted an investigation about child abuse, sexual abuse, which concludes that 440,000 child, many of them, adults nowadays, were abused by the clergy. And yesterday, we finally got the missing ones. The retired officials of the army which asked for the destitution of the prime minister. This is the same far right that governs some regions in Spain and denies climate change, denies gender-based violence, denies the linguistic diversity of the country, denies the culture that the culture makes us freer. But we, women, young, feminist, queer, greens, migrants, anti-racist, anti-fascist are the ones who look at them into the ace and tell them we are not scared. Or as we say in Spanish, no pasaran. We are building a glittering green future. We build alliances with activists, civil society organizations, academy, trade unions to face the upcoming challenges and also to stop this reactionary wave of the far right. This is what we are doing in Spain, this is what you are doing in Poland and this is what we all need to do for Europe. The next EU elections are going to be crucial. Crucial to build the progressist majority that strength Europe and the European Union, building a continent of peace, solidarity, prosperity for all. This prosperity for all means more economic justice, more social justice, more climate justice and we know how to do it. Green progressist forces are governing in many municipalities, in many regions, in some national governments and we are able to design public policies that improve the quality of life of people. To fight against energy poverty while guiding energy autonomy to the carbonized transport sector while making it affordable for all. To greening the industry while recalifying the workers. We know how to lead this just green transition where no one is left behind and we are proving it. But proving that we can do it and very well is not enough to build an European progressist majority. It is not enough to convince the millions of citizens that will vote in European elections. To do so and I'm finishing, we need to stand for the voiceless and we need to do politics from all perspectives. Scientists who are proving with data that is now or never workers who strike for better salaries. Climate activists who are shouting our wall is on fire. Young people who organize themselves to be heard and to have access to decent housing. The LGBT community who make themselves visible to be who they are without fear. Women who fight patriarchy every single day. Migrants and refugees who risk their lives for a dignified life. This is the power that we have. Strengthen the cooperation with the different actors which have different strategies from the streets, from the institutions, from the civil society, actually from all the places that we have been listening to these days is how we are going to manage. We need to be organized to strengthen our voices and protect our interests. So let's get ready and fight for a green, just and feminist Europe. Thank you. Thank you, Julia. Thank you very much, Shinya. Last but not least, Agatha. Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be here and I've really enjoyed the European Green Academy so far. I'm really inspired by the sessions but also by the informal exchanges during the breaks. So thank you so much for the invitation. I also wanted to thank a lot the interpreters for making these interventions accessible and available to everybody. I know this is not easy work, so I really appreciate that. So let me take you back to May 2019. When the European Parliament elections were driven by a green wave from across Europe, young people played a key role by striking on the streets, by mobilizing their communities and leading major campaigns all over Europe. Environmental issues drove the top of the political agenda with many countries hitting records of participation and support for green priorities. This is when Generation Climate Europe was created. We strongly believed that the voices of young people must be not only heard but also listened to at the highest levels of EU decision-making processes. And it was the first time that we united the largest youth-led networks in Europe with a joint priority, tackling the planetary crisis with a multidisciplinary and intersectional approach. We brought together organizations that are working on various issues that matter to young people, education, governance, human rights, women's rights, employment, and many others, all to build bridges between those communities and to mobilize those young people who are not yet involved. This is because to tackle the climate emergency, we need to look beyond the siloed approaches and to build a system with effective, strong, and inclusive democracy at its core. So at GCE, we're mobilizing the potential of young people as systems thinkers who understand the bigger picture of the crises that we're facing. And we have been advocating for meaningful engagement of young people and youth organizations. Now, what does that mean? What is meaningful youth engagement? That means engagement that is regular. It means events that are not just happening on a one-time basis. That means engagement that is diverse. That means engaging young people from many different backgrounds because young people are not just one group with one common opinion, which I very often hear is the case, apparently. And finally, that is engagement that is structured, that is incorporated in the decision-making processes, and has a follow-up mechanism. We don't want young people to just be in the room to share their incredible ideas and then nothing happens with those priorities. There needs to be a follow-up mechanism which allows that decision-makers respond actively to those priorities. And over the last years, we have seen more and more young people speaking in various international fora. However, since then, youth participation has become a bit of a buzzword, a box-ticking exercise, so to say. You invite a speaker under 35 on your stage, tick. You post a photo of that speaker on Twitter with hashtags youth and representation and participation, tick. And finally, you make a reference to how they give you hope for the future, tick. But there is very little interest in meaningful engagement, in listening to what is almost one-fourth of the European population. So, in addition to grain-washing, we now also have to tackle youth-washing. When young people are involved in a superficial and in a tokenistic way, and young people are increasingly losing trust in the governments, they feel disconnected and not represented by what they see in politics. And ahead of the European Parliament elections, we see a very concerning trend. We see more and more young people shifting from supporting progressive to supporting conservative anti-EU political parties. And we see more and more young people with progressive views who decide to stay at home and not vote. And if you look at the numbers, people who are aged between 18 and 24 are in fact twice as likely to not vote compared to the other population. Now, let me be clear, this is a massive risk to the progress we have made since the last elections. And it's a threat to a united and strong Europe. Because there's no democracy without active citizenship. And there's no democracy without young people who are informed, engaged and empowered to act. I often hear people say that you are the leaders of the future. But I strongly disagree. We are here now and we are fighting for a better world now. But many of us are overwhelmed, scared, sad and anxious about the many crises that we're experiencing. The climate crisis, the housing crisis, the energy crisis, the educational crisis. It's crushing and it's terrifying. And I'm sure many of you have felt this way. I know I have. It's that vision of a better world and that purpose that drives me. But there are days when it's so hard to keep going. And we go through this ourselves. And yet we're translating those feelings into the way that we try to mobilize people to act. We tell them that we don't have time anymore. We tell them that it's almost too late. We show them those terrifying graphs and predictions of a global collapse. But the truth is that only a small proportion of organizations really understand their target audiences. Because we see this over and over again. People do not change their minds when they see just numbers and data. Or when they hear once again about the wave of bad news coming at them from all different sides. People need a hopeful vision for the future. And most importantly, communities around them that support them and drive that motivation. And we need those communities more than ever. Communities with that new vision of prosperity. One that is focused on meeting the fundamental needs and rights of all. Providing that safe and just space in which everyone can thrive within planetary boundaries. So when you go back home, I encourage you to remember the power you hold in your hands as you engage with people in your cities, countries and communities. It is the privilege of leadership that's a responsibility of action. And it's the passion, determination and motivation of people like you who want to make a difference that sparks the change. But it's the community of change makers that drives a societal transformation. Thank you. Again, yes, it works. Thank you very much. We were thinking that you deserve a bit of a shake up. And maybe let's just shake up a bit. I see like three people doing it. It's fine. Some, yeah, thank you. Okay, Frank is always there. Good. Yeah, we wanted to spend a bit of like few minutes just to wrap up a bit in our mind all this inspiration. We know it's a lot. Few minutes will not be enough. But we would like to kind of, you know, get ready and set the basis for a proper evaluation and inspirations and follow up and all of it. I will just like to ask a couple of questions to the plenary and Tomke will very nicely also translated in Polish. So you can also take some breathing time there. The first thing that I will ask you to do is really just to talk to a person next to you for literally one minute on like what was the most impressionable thing at this academy? Na początek zapraszamy was do tego, żeby podzielić się z osobą siedzącą obok was tym co zrobiło na was największe wrażenie w czasie Akademii.