By Martin Banks*

Almost two-thirds of Green parties' lists for the upcoming European elections are headed by women.

The party says that this “shows that the Greens are leading the way in redressing the gender imbalance in politics.”
Elections to the European parliament take place over 4 days from 6 to 9 June. Over 250 million voters in 27 member states will be eligible to vote. In EU elections, political parties produce lists of candidates for each region and order the candidates according to who is their first nomination. As parties win seats, those at the top of the lists gain them first.

 In the run-up to the European elections all political parties in Europe are currently in the process of drawing up their lists.

So far, 14 of the member parties of the Green party have already drawn up their list. Of those, 9 of these 14 lists have a woman at the top of the list. This corresponds to 64%.  The European Parliament elections determine who will represent EU citizens in the Parliament over the next five years.

The upcoming Parliament will be the tenth since MEPs began to be elected in 1979. For the Greens, these are the women who head their lists:

•  In Austria, Lena Schilling leads the Die Grünen electoral list
• In Belgium, Saskia Bricmont leads the  Ecolo  list, and SaraMatthieu leads the  Groen  list
•  In the Czech Republic, Johanna Nejedlová leads
  the  Zelení  electoral list
•  In Denmark, Kira-Marie Peter-Hansen leads the  Socialistisk
  Folkeparti  (SF) list
• In France, Marie Toussaint leads the list of Les Ecologistes
• In Germany, Terry Reintke leads the list of  Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen
• In Latvia, Elīna Pinto leads the  Progresīvie  electoral list
•  and in Sweden, Alice Bah Kuhnke leads the electoral list
  of  Miljöpartiet

The national lists for the EU elections will further be completed in the next months. The Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament is also the only group with gender parity.

Comment came from European Green Party co-chairs Mélanie Vogel and Thomas Waitz who noted that it was recently the International Day for Women’s Rights.

A statement said, “With less than 100 days to go until the European elections, we’re proud that the Green parties take the lead in tackling the gender imbalance in the world of politics”.