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Green parties face major challenges ahead. How can we finance welfare in the future? How do we strengthen the third sector and the public sector in many countries? How do we find ways to regulate the private welfare market? How much of the wealth can be managed by non-profit organisations or volunteer work (the church or the family?) These are among the questions that are discussed in a new report by GEF and its partners.

The UK’s new ‘Tarpaulin Revolution,’ led by a revived Occupy movement and featuring many Greens, hopes to capture the imaginations of people across Europe – in cities and countries also suffering the impacts of inequality, austerity and ‘democracy’ weighted to benefit the 1%.

Negotiations over the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are being conducted as if they were private business deals. Trade policies, however, affect all of us and have implications for the global economy.

The AfD is elbowing its way into the right-wing populist gap in the party political landscape with a call for a nationalistic approach to economic policy based on free market fundamentalism. As a counter-reaction to the pluralist and multicultural immigration society, it stands in opposition to everything that is Green.

Despite the lack of a proportional electoral system, Britain is now a multi-party country, with the Greens becoming a powerful force. Yet the major media organisations are planning to exclude the Green Party of England and Wales from next year’s televised election debates for the General Election. It’s a dangerous situation for democracy in the UK, with over a million Green voters marginalised…

With hard-right parties on the rise across Europe, Greens can learn from this recent surge in ‘populism’ by developing a positive and inclusive conception of the term. A Grand Narrative about a ‘Europe of hearts’ can speak to people directly and produce a different kind of patriotism to that of the nationalists: Europatriotism.

Greens are now in government in Sweden for the first time in the party’s 33-year-long history, yet the electoral result was regarded as disappointing. In light of the rise of xenophobic populists and a difficult political climate, it remains to be seen how Greens will fare in the new coalition.

The New Deal for Europe is a European Citizens’ Initiative supported by a coalition of social and political groups. It emerged as a response to the economic crisis, and seeks to build a solid employment and sustainable development plan for Europe by relying on federalist ideas and mechanisms to enhance solidarity in the EU.

Images of the People’s Climate March that took place in New York on September 21st have circulated around the world, along with pictures from many other cities. Yet being a part of such a massive and important mobilisation, characterised more than ever by pluralism and diversity, was a truly unique sensation.

Civil society pressure, upcoming elections, and a lack of consensus within the Popular Party led to plans for the restriction of abortion to be abandoned – and caused the resignation of the Spanish Justice Minister last week.