Małgorzata Tracz - Candidacy for EGP Committee Member

Wrocław, March 28th, 2022

Dear Green Friends,

I hereby present my candidacy for the Executive Committee of the European Green Party.

For almost 7 years I have had the honour and pleasure to serve as a co-chair of the Polish Green Party (Zieloni). During that time I put all my efforts to develop Greens in Poland, support my Polish colleagues in their local activities and provide Greens with media visibility, financial independence and parliamentary representation. In January 2022 I decided not to run again for the position of co-chair of Zieloni, knowing that in those 7 years new leaders emerged who deserved their chance.

In that time the Greens in Poland started a long march to grow step by step, become a professional and recognisable organisation and establish excellent relations with the European Green Party and Greens from other European countries. In 2019, thanks to this huge collective effort, for the first time in our history three members of the Green Party were elected to the Polish parliament.

I am one of them. As a MP I am a vice-president of the Civic Coalition (Koalicja Obywatelska), the biggest opposition faction in the parliament. I work in the Agriculture Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee, but I am also very active in the areas of human rights, just transition and rule of law.

I wholeheartedly appreciate the great support that we as Greens in Poland received from our Green family when I was a co-chair of Zieloni. Now, I would like to serve other member parties of EGP with my experience on partybuiding, campaigning in the elections and creating coalitions in which Greens can flourish and succeed.

Should I be elected as a member of the EGP Executive Committee, I would like to pursue the following three goals:

• First of all, I will support Green parties and green-minded activists in Central and Eastern European and Balkan countries. We have a similar experience of flawed democracy, facing each day infringements of the rule of law, corruption of the authorities and lack of respect to human rights. We have a similar political situation, with the electoral law supporting big parties and barring smaller ones (like the Greens) from making a breakthrough. I strongly believe my experience from leading the Polish Green Party, which grows and increases its political impact day by day, will help the Greens in those countries play a more important role on the political scene. I will gladly visit your countries and make it happen.

• Secondly, I will focus the attention of the EGP on issues which are of a prime importance to Europe at this moment: the war in Ukraine and the needs of refugees, but also women and LGBT+ rights violations, infringements of the rule of law, and projects damaging the environment. I experienced those issues particularly hard in my native Poland, whose government unfortunately is a EU chief troublemaker, but I know other countries share them too.

• Thirdly, I will further develop EGP campaigns and initiatives. Polish Greens benefited a lot from Green Idea Labs and Green Recovery Tour. I would like to expand those programs to encourage more member parties to participate in and support them.

As CEE and Balkan countries face so many problems with human rights violations, infringements of the rule of law and corruption, we need strong representation of those countries in the EGP Committee . That is why I strongly support the candidacy of Michal Berg from Strana zelených (Czech Greens) for the Committee.

Finally I would like to add that we need to make the 2024 election to the European Parliament a positive turn for the Greens throughout Europe. I will give all my knowledge about electoral law and running election campaigns at the disposal of EGP member parties. I hope that in 2024 we will have even more MEPs, especially from Central and Eastern European and Balkan countries.

Best regards,
Małgorzata Tracz
The Polish Green Party (Zieloni)

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