| The Greens | |
| Native Name: | Zieloni |
| Secretary: | Waldemar Kamiński[1] |
| Spokesperson: | Michał Suchora[2] |
| Leader1 Title: | Co-Chairs |
| Youth Wing: | Young Greens |
| Ideology: | Green politics Progressivism Pro-Europeanism |
| National: | Civic Coalition Senate Pact 2023 (for 2023 Senate election) |
| International: | Global Greens |
| European: | European Green Party |
| Europarl: | European Greens–European Free Alliance |
| Colours: | Green |
| Seats1 Title: | Sejm |
| Seats2 Title: | Senate |
| Seats3 Title: | European Parliament |
| Seats4 Title: | Regional assemblies |
| Country: | Poland |
The Greens (Polish: Zieloni) is a political party in Poland.
It was formed in 2003 under the name "Greens 2004" and formally registered itself in February 2004. It supports principles of green politics,[3] and it is positioned on the centre-left and leans towards the left-wing. The party is an international member of the Global Greens, European member of European Green Party and cooperates with the European Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament.
The party was established in 2003 by activists of several social movements. Among its founding members were environmentalists, feminists, LGBT people and anti-war activists. The first political campaign of the emerging party concerned the Polish European Union membership referendum, the Greens campaigned for a "yes" vote.
Greens 2004 took part in the movement against the Iraq War in 2003 and participated in Equality Parades and other social protests in the time of "Fourth Republic" (2005–2007). Since 3 March 2013, the official name of the party is Partia Zieloni (The Greens), while Greens 2004 is a historical name and can still be used.
During the late 2000s and the early 2010s, the party cooperated with various socialist parties in the elections.
The party was represented in the Sejm between 2014 and 2015 by Anna Grodzka (she was elected as Palikot's Movement member in 2011). By the mid-2010s, the party lost many members (e. g. Marcelina Zawisza), who formed new party called Razem (Together).
Since 2018, the party began to cooperate with Civic Platform and Modern parties. In 2019, as part of Civic Coalition, it won three seats in Sejm. These representatives became members of Civic Coalition parliamentary group. On 8 March 2023, Klaudia Jachira, previously independent representative within Civic Platform, joined The Greens.[4]
| Election year | Leader |
| % of vote |
| +/– | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Magdalena Mosiewicz, Dariusz Szwed | 459, 380 | 3.9 | New | ||
| 2011 | 1,184,303 | 8.2 | ||||
| 2015 | Małgorzata Tracz, Adam Ostolski | 1,147,102 | 7.6 | |||
| 2019 | Małgorzata Tracz, Marek Kossakowski | 5,060,355 | 27.4 | 3 | ||
| 2023 | Urszula Zielińska, Przemysław Słowik | 6,629,402 | 30.7 | |||
In the 2004 European Parliament election, the Greens received 0.27% of the votes.
In the 2005 presidential election, the Greens supported Marek Borowski, the chairman of the SDPL, who received 10.33% of the votes.
In the 2006 local elections, the Greens structured themselves and decided on the formula for the start of elections (because the party's national authorities rejected the invitation to the alliance of the Left and Democrats). The independent list of the Greens in Warsaw received 11 210 votes (1.68%) and 7th place out of 14. Less than 1% of support was obtained in Wrocław and Gdańsk by the local committees co-created by the Greens with Young Socialists. In other cities, people associated with the party were candidates from local, mainly non-party lists or the Left and Democrats coalition.
In the 2007 parliamentary election, the Greens contested one district in the Senate.
In February 2009, the Greens formed a coalition called Alliance for the Future (Porozumienie dla Przyszłości - CentroLewica) with the social liberal Democratic Party and the social democratic SDPL, forming a common list for the 2009 European Parliament election.
In the 2010 presidential election, the Greens supported Grzegorz Napieralski based on the analysis of the programs of the most important candidates. The SLD candidate obtained the highest score in the Green Index ranking: 78 on a scale from -200 to +200 points. In the second round, the party members encouraged to vote, but they did not support any of the candidates, pointing to their conservatism and economic neoliberalism.
In the 2010 local elections, members of the Greens ran in most cases from the lists of Democratic Left Alliance. In these elections, the Greens won five seats in local councils and regional parliaments.
In the 2011 parliamentary election, representatives of the party again found themselves on the lists of the Democratic Left Alliance, but they did not obtain any seats in the Sejm. The Green candidates themselves gained 23 421 votes, which gave 0.16% of the votes. The only one of the Greens was their chairman Dariusz Szwed opening the list in the Chrzanów constituency, in which he obtained 3 842 votes.
In the 2014 European Parliament election, the Greens formed their own Election Committee of the Greens. The representatives of the Women's Party, the Polish Socialist Party and Young Socialists have announced the start of the Green Committee's lists. The Committee registered lists in five districts. The Committee of the Greens obtained 22 221 votes (0.32%) in the elections, taking the 10th place (ahead of, among others, the Direct Democracy committee, whose lists were registered in six districts).
In the 2014 local elections, the Greens issued their own letters to the city council in Warsaw and Wrocław, in Warsaw, issuing Joanna Erbel as their own candidate for the city's presidency, and in Wrocław supporting the SLD candidate. In Kraków, together with trade unions and city movements, they co-founded the Kraków Against the Olympic Committee. In Opole, the current councilor of the Greens, Beata Kubica (elected in 2010 from the SLD list) ran for the city council from the list of German Minorities. In the Lubuskie voivodeship, the Greens together with the Social Justice Movement, trade unions and civic movements, co-founded the Nowy Ład Committee in the elections to the regional council. The Greens also issued a dozen or so candidates in the One-National Electoral Circumscriptions in Poland.
As a result of the elections, the independent lists of the Green Party in Warsaw received 2.55% of votes to the city council. A similar result (2.48%) was received by the candidate for the mayor of the city, Joanna Erbel. The Wrocław Green list received 1.97% of the votes to the city council. In Kraków, the Kraków Against the Olympic Committee, co-created by the Greens, received 6.7% of the votes, which did not translate into mandates, with Tomasz Leśniak receiving 4.84% of the votes in the elections for the city president. The Electoral Committee New Deal, co-created by the Greens, received 0.62% of support in the elections to the Lubusz Regional Assembly (it was the 10th result from among 11 committees). No Green candidate for a councilor in the single-member district has obtained a seat.
In the 2015 presidential election, the candidate for the party was the deputy Anna Grodzka, who, however, did not collect the required number of 100 000 signatures.
Greens joined the Zjednoczona Lewica (United Left) electoral alliance for the 2015 parliamentary election in July 2015. In the election the alliance received 7.6% of the vote, below the 8% electoral threshold leaving the alliance with no parliamentary representation. It was officially dissolved in February 2016.
In the 2018 local elections, the Greens, without any electoral alliance, managed to obtain the highest ever result in their party history of 1.15% of the votes,[5] with their highest result as a percentage in Lubusz voivodeship (2.62%), and the highest local Gmina result being in Gmina Żary (10.0%).
This concludes that the Greens achieved better overall results in Western Poland areas which are near to the borders of Germany.
On 6 November 2018, at a press conference, the Greens officially announced preparations for the 2019 elections both at the national and European level. Announced at the end of July 2019, the party will participate in the 2019 Polish parliamentary election as part of the Civic Coalition.[6]
The framework for Green policies, called The Green Manifesto, was adopted by the founding congress of the party on 6 and 7 September 2003. The Green Manifesto outlined the principles of green politics in seven areas: social justice and solidarity, civil society and reclaiming the state for citizens, environmental protection and sustainable development, gender equality, respect for national, cultural and religious diversity, protecting minority rights, and non-violent conflict resolution.[7]
At the 4th Congress in April 2011, the Greens 2004 adopted elaborated policy documents concerning the principles of social policy, education policy, and health care policy.[8]
The current official policies approved during the party's XI Congress:[9]
"Protection of Earth resources is our obligation"
"Good governance economy"
"Equality and solidarity being everyone's right"
"Good quality food based on sustainable development"
In the past, the Greens in their manifestos have declared, among others:
The Greens, due to their pacifist stance, also oppose the restoration of the death penalty and the introduction of a flat tax, as well as the construction of elements of US anti-missile installations in Poland (the so-called anti-missile shield).
Organizations which are affiliated or managed with and by the Greens.
Co-Chairs:Przemyslaw SlowikUrszula Zielinska
Female co-chair
Male co-chair
Other notable members of the party include: Kinga Dunin (writer, feminist, editor of Krytyka Polityczna), Radosław Gawlik (environmental activist, former deputy minister of the environment), Zbigniew Marek Hass, Tomasz Kitliński (philosopher, LGBT rights activist), Wojciech Koronkiewicz (poet, journalist, film director), Izabela Kowalczyk (art critic), Bartłomiej Kozek, Aleksandra Kretkowska, Bartosz Lech (former co-chair of the FYEG), Paweł Leszkowicz (art curator and art historian), Jerzy Masłowski, Magdalena Masny, Adam Ostolski (sociologist, member of Krytyka Polityczna), Monika Paca, Kazimiera Szczuka (writer, feminist, hosted the Polish version of The Weakest Link), Olga Tokarczuk (writer), Ludwik Tomiałojć (ornithologist), Ewa Sufin-Jacquemart (Consul of Poland in Luxembourg 2007–2011).
Sources for expansion of the article might be: homepage of the party, in Polish and European Green Party's Zieloni sub-site.