Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Encyclopedia
Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit (born 4 April 1945) is a Franco-German politician, active in both countries. He was a student leader during the unrest of May 1968 in France and he was also known during that time as Dany le Rouge (French for "Danny the Red", because of both his politics and the color of his hair). He is currently co-president of the group European Greens–European Free Alliance
in the European Parliament
, becoming "Dany le Vert" (French for "Danny the Green", because of his new fight for ecology), and co-chair of the Spinelli Group
, a European parliament
intergroup aiming at relaunching the federalist project in Europe.
In 2010, he was involved in founding JCall
, advocacy group based in Europe to lobby the European parliament
on foreign policy issues concerning the Middle East.
, France, to a German-Jewish
father and a French-Jewish mother who had fled Nazism
in 1933. He spent his childhood in Montauban
. He moved to Germany in 1958, where his father had been a lawyer since the end of the war. He attended the Odenwaldschule
in Heppenheim
near Frankfurt, a secondary school for children of the upper middle class. Being officially stateless
at birth, when he reached the age of 14 he chose German citizenship, in order to avoid conscription
.
's theorist Manuel Castells
. He soon joined the larger and classic nationwide anarchist federation Fédération anarchiste, which he left in 1967 in favour of the smaller and local Groupe anarchiste de Nanterre and the Noir et rouge magazine. Although residing in Paris, he was frequently able to travel back to Germany, where he was notably influenced by the death of Benno Ohnesorg
in 1967, and the assault on Rudi Dutschke
in April 1968. In this tense context, he invited Karl Dietrich Wolff, leader of the Socialist German Student Union
, for a lecture in Paris, which would prove influential to later May events.
In Nanterre, Cohn-Bendit was a leader in claims for more sexual freedom, with actions such as participating in the occupation of the girls' premises, interrupting the speech of a minister who was inaugurating a swimming pool in order to demand free access to the girls' dormitory. This contributed to attracting to him a lot of student supporters later to be called the '22 March Movement
', a group characterised by a mixture of Marxist, sexual and anarchist semantics. In the autumn of 1967 rumours of his upcoming expulsion from the university led to a local students' strike, and his expulsion was cancelled. On 22 March 1968 students occupied the administrative offices, and the closing of the university on 2 May helped move the protests to downtown Paris.
From 3 May 1968 onwards, massive student and workers riots erupted in Paris against Charles de Gaulle
's government. Cohn-Bendit quickly emerged as a public face of the student protests, along with Jacques Sauvageot, Alain Geismar and Alain Krivine
. His "foreign" origins were highlighted by opponents of the student movement, leading to students taking up the chant, "Nous sommes tous des Juifs allemands" ("We are all German Jews").
The French Communist Party
leader Georges Marchais
described Cohn-Bendit as the "German anarchist Cohn-Bendit" and denounced some student protesters as "sons of the upper bourgeoisie ... who will quickly forget their revolutionary flame in order to manage daddy's firm and exploit workers there". Continued police violence, however, prompted trade unions (and eventually the Communist Party) to support the students, and from 13 May onwards, France was struck by a general strike.
However Cohn-Bendit had already retreated on 10 May with a few friends to the Atlantic coast city of Saint-Nazaire
, seeing that his Nanterre group had become a minority without political influence in the larger Paris students' movement. Cohn-Bendit's political opponents took advantage of his German passport and had him expelled from Saint-Nazaire to Germany on 22 May as a "seditious alien". On 27 May the Communist-led workers signed the Grenelle agreements
with the government; on 30 May supporters of the president organised a successful demonstration; new elections were called and at the end of June 1968 the Gaullists were back in power, now occupying three-quarters of the French National Assembly.
On the whole, Cohn-Bendit had participated little in the May 1968 Paris events, which continued without him, but he had become a legend, which was to be used later in the 1990s upon his return to France.
in the family house, Cohn-Bendit became one of co-founders of the autonomist group Revolutionärer Kampf (Revolutionary Struggle) in Rüsselsheim
. From this point his fate was linked with Joschka Fischer
, another leader in the group. Both were later to become leaders of the Realo wing of the German Green Party, alongside many former Communist and non-Communist libertarian leftists
.
Some have suggested that the group participated in violent action, which was common in the German extreme left of the early-seventies. But testimony from witnesses appears contradictory, sometimes unreliable. Communal apartments were common on the left, and peaceful political activists could easily have shared living quarters with terrorists, without further collaboration. In 2003 a request was presented by Frankfurt prosecutors to the European Parliament
, requesting they waive the immunity of MEP
Cohn-Bendit, in the context of a criminal investigation against the terrorist, Hans-Joachim Klein
, but the request was rejected by the assembly.
While Fischer was more concerned with demonstrations, Cohn-Bendit worked in the Karl-Marx-Buchhandlung bookshop and ran a kindergarten. In his 1975 book Le Grand Bazar, he described himself as engaging in sexual activities with very young children at the kindergarten. In 2001 Cohn-Bendit said that the account was invented for purposes of "verbal provocation", and that “I admit that what I wrote is unacceptable nowadays”.
.
In 1988 he published, in French, Nous l'avons tant aimée, la révolution (In English: We Loved It So Much, the Revolution), a book full of nostalgia for the 1968 counter-culture, and announced his shift toward more centrist policies. In 1989 he became deputy mayor of Frankfurt
, in charge of multicultural affairs. Immigrants made up some 30% of the city at that time. He also developed a more tolerant policy towards drug addicts.
, as German Greens at the time did not support the resumption of German military intervention abroad.
At the European elections in 1999
, he re-entered French politics as the leader of the French Green Party (Les Verts
) list. He found considerable support in the French media, who often feature him, even when he does not represent or is at odds with the French Green party. He reached 9.72% of votes, a score since then unequalled by the French Greens.
In 2002 he became president of the Green parliamentary group, together with the Italian MEP Monica Frassoni
.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s Cohn-Bendit attracted controversy for his independent views. He was criticised from the political right for being a strong proponent of freer immigration
, the legalisation of soft drugs, and the abandonment of nuclear power
and from the left for his pro-free market
policies, his support for military interventions in Bosnia
and Afghanistan
and frequent collaboration with centrist personalities (Bernard Kouchner
and François Bayrou
for instance).
Cohn-Bendit's disregard for conventional European politics of left and right has made him more unpopular in France than in Germany. The French Green Party and the French left in general remain more attached to these distinctions, whereas in the German Green Party, the moderate Realo wing had already won over the hard-line Fundi
wing, possible alliances with the Conservatives were no longer taboo, and third way
policies under the center-left Gerhard Schröder
government, such as Agenda 2010
and the Hartz I - IV
laws, found considerable support. He was also accused of not giving to the French party the percentage of income that all MEPs
and other elected members are supposed to give to their party, although the party had officially agreed to exempt him before his first election in France. This, alongside his pro-European
attitude, led him to participate in the 2004 European elections on the German side, where he became the highest male candidate on the list and was elected again.
In 2009, Cohn-Bendit criticised Pope Benedict XVI over his comment that condoms only make AIDS worse.
.
In February 2004, in the context of the preparation of his electoral campaign and in the wider context of the final governmental drafting of the text, he led the foundation of the European Green Party
in Rome. Fischer had directly participated to the drafting as German minister of foreign affairs, he was considered one of the candidates for the new role of "European minister of Foreign Affairs" evoked in the text, and his speech was the keynote of the event. Cohn-Bendit described the European Green Party as the first stone of European citizenship, but other commentators described this new structure as a mere adaptation of the former Federation of European Green Parties. Just as in the former structure, only delegates from national parties were allowed to vote, individual supporters were only entitled to receive information, and all other federations of European parties had to adapt their statuses later in 2004 to the new regulations from the European Commission
about European political parties
, in order to continue receive public funding. However, Cohn-Bendit as usual was early and energetic in presenting this innovation to the media.
During this congress in Rome he also confirmed his involvement in favour of free software
. He publicly confessed not understanding much about computer terms, but supported license-free software as part of a stronger market economy.
In 2005 he took an active part in the campaign in favour of the European constitution during the French referendum. The treaty was considered by a large part of the left as a European version of globalisation, and Cohn-Bendit became loathed by treaty opponents as one of the symbols of centre-left leaders collaborating with neo-liberalism through international institutions, along with Pascal Lamy
from the Socialist Party. He also singled himself out by appearing publicly with right-wing leaders, contrarily to the tactics adopted by the Green Party
and the centre-left during that campaign.
gave Cohn-Bendit a major breakthrough in France. In spite of a conservative victory by Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP Party with 27,9% of the votes and an overall conservative victory all over Europe, Europe Écologie, the coalition founded by Cohn-Bendit, won over 16,28% of the votes, trailing the French Socialist Party led by Martine Aubry (16,48%) by only 0,2%. According to official French results, Cohn-Bendit's list thus became the third political force in France, even overtaking the Socialist Party in the Paris region, and, furthermore by adding the votes of an alternative green party also present in the election, giving greens a never yet experienced weight in French politics. His list featured Franco-Norwegian Magistrate Eva Joly
, a specialist of anti-corruption struggles, and José Bové
, a controversial unionist.
, which was founded to reinvigorate the strive for federalisation of the European Union (EU). Other prominent supporters are: Jacques Delors
, Joschka Fischer
, Andrew Duff
, Elmar Brok
.
, President of the Czech Republic
, in a meeting held prior to the Czech presidency of the European Union.
Cohn-Bendit reportedly told the Czechs not to interfere with passage of the EU's climate change
package.
's green-urban-liberal LMP
party, had a fiery discussion with conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orbán
over a new Hungarian press freedom and media law in a January 2011 EP meeting. Cohn-Bendit stated, amongst others, that Orbán's speech took away his appetite for lunch (alluding to a lunch invitation by Orbán). As a reply, Orbán failed to shake hands with him following the meeting.
European Greens–European Free Alliance
The Greens European Free Alliance is one of the parliamentary groups in the European Parliament....
in the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
, becoming "Dany le Vert" (French for "Danny the Green", because of his new fight for ecology), and co-chair of the Spinelli Group
Spinelli Group
The Spinelli Group is a pro-European initiative that was founded with a view to reinvigorate the strive for federalisation of the European Union , by creating a network of citizens, think tanks, NGOs, academics, writers and politicians who support the idea of a federal and united Europe...
, a European parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
intergroup aiming at relaunching the federalist project in Europe.
In 2010, he was involved in founding JCall
JCall
JCall is a nonprofit advocacy group based in Europe to lobby the European parliament on foreign policy issues concerning the Middle East and Israel in particular. They say they are based along the lines of the America group J Street, founded just months before this group...
, advocacy group based in Europe to lobby the European parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
on foreign policy issues concerning the Middle East.
Biography
Cohn-Bendit was born in MontaubanMontauban
Montauban is a commune in the Tarn-et-Garonne department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in southern France. It is the capital of the department and lies north of Toulouse....
, France, to a German-Jewish
Yekke
The term Yekke is a generally jovial, mildly derogatory term primarily used by Jews to refer to their coreligionists from Germany or who adhere to the Western-European minhag....
father and a French-Jewish mother who had fled Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
in 1933. He spent his childhood in Montauban
Montauban
Montauban is a commune in the Tarn-et-Garonne department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in southern France. It is the capital of the department and lies north of Toulouse....
. He moved to Germany in 1958, where his father had been a lawyer since the end of the war. He attended the Odenwaldschule
Odenwaldschule
Odenwaldschule, is a German school located in Heppenheim in the Odenwald. Founded in 1910, it is Germany's oldest landschulheim, a private boarding school located in a rural setting. Edith and Paul Geheeb established it using their concept of progressive education, which integrated the work of the...
in Heppenheim
Heppenheim
Heppenheim is the seat of Bergstraße district in Hesse, Germany, lying on the Bergstraße on the edge of the Odenwald.- Location :...
near Frankfurt, a secondary school for children of the upper middle class. Being officially stateless
Stateless
- Society :* Anarchy* Stateless communism, which Karl Marx predicted would follow capitalism and socialism* Stateless nation, a group of people without a nation-state* Stateless society, a society that is not governed by a state...
at birth, when he reached the age of 14 he chose German citizenship, in order to avoid conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
.
Early life in France
He returned to France in 1966 to study sociology at the University of Nanterre under the supervision of the network societyNetwork society
The term Network Society describes several different phenomena related to the social, political, economic and cultural changes caused by the spread of networked, digital information and communications technologies. A number of academics are credited with coining the term since the 1990's and...
's theorist Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells is a sociologist especially associated with information society and communication research....
. He soon joined the larger and classic nationwide anarchist federation Fédération anarchiste, which he left in 1967 in favour of the smaller and local Groupe anarchiste de Nanterre and the Noir et rouge magazine. Although residing in Paris, he was frequently able to travel back to Germany, where he was notably influenced by the death of Benno Ohnesorg
Benno Ohnesorg
Benno Ohnesorg was a German university student killed by a policeman during a demonstration in West Berlin.- Death :On June 2, 1967, Ohnesorg participated in a protest held near the Deutsche Oper, aimed against the state visit of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was attending a...
in 1967, and the assault on Rudi Dutschke
Rudi Dutschke
Alfred Willi Rudi Dutschke was the most prominent spokesperson of the German student movement of the 1960s. He advocated 'a long march through the institutions' of power to create radical change from within government and society by becoming an integral part of the machinery...
in April 1968. In this tense context, he invited Karl Dietrich Wolff, leader of the Socialist German Student Union
Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund
Der Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund was founded 1946 in Hamburg, Germany, as the college organisation of the SPD...
, for a lecture in Paris, which would prove influential to later May events.
In Nanterre, Cohn-Bendit was a leader in claims for more sexual freedom, with actions such as participating in the occupation of the girls' premises, interrupting the speech of a minister who was inaugurating a swimming pool in order to demand free access to the girls' dormitory. This contributed to attracting to him a lot of student supporters later to be called the '22 March Movement
Movement of 22 March
The Mouvement du 22 Mars was a French student movement at the University of Nanterre founded on 22 March 1968, which carried out a prolonged occupation of the university's administration building...
', a group characterised by a mixture of Marxist, sexual and anarchist semantics. In the autumn of 1967 rumours of his upcoming expulsion from the university led to a local students' strike, and his expulsion was cancelled. On 22 March 1968 students occupied the administrative offices, and the closing of the university on 2 May helped move the protests to downtown Paris.
From 3 May 1968 onwards, massive student and workers riots erupted in Paris against Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
's government. Cohn-Bendit quickly emerged as a public face of the student protests, along with Jacques Sauvageot, Alain Geismar and Alain Krivine
Alain Krivine
Alain Krivine is a leader of the Trotskyist movement in France. He is a member of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire , which is the French section of the reunified Fourth International. He was a member of the LCR's political bureau until March 2006, when he resigned from that committee...
. His "foreign" origins were highlighted by opponents of the student movement, leading to students taking up the chant, "Nous sommes tous des Juifs allemands" ("We are all German Jews").
The French Communist Party
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
leader Georges Marchais
Georges Marchais
Georges René Louis Marchais was the head of the French Communist Party from 1972 to 1994, and a candidate in the French presidential elections of 1981 - in which he managed to garner only 15.34% of the vote, which was considered at the time a major setback for the party.-Early life:Born into a...
described Cohn-Bendit as the "German anarchist Cohn-Bendit" and denounced some student protesters as "sons of the upper bourgeoisie ... who will quickly forget their revolutionary flame in order to manage daddy's firm and exploit workers there". Continued police violence, however, prompted trade unions (and eventually the Communist Party) to support the students, and from 13 May onwards, France was struck by a general strike.
However Cohn-Bendit had already retreated on 10 May with a few friends to the Atlantic coast city of Saint-Nazaire
Saint-Nazaire
Saint-Nazaire , is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France.The town has a major harbour, on the right bank of the Loire River estuary, near the Atlantic Ocean. The town is at the south of the second-largest swamp in France, called "la Brière"...
, seeing that his Nanterre group had become a minority without political influence in the larger Paris students' movement. Cohn-Bendit's political opponents took advantage of his German passport and had him expelled from Saint-Nazaire to Germany on 22 May as a "seditious alien". On 27 May the Communist-led workers signed the Grenelle agreements
Grenelle agreements
The Grenelle Agreements or Grenelle Reports were negotiated 25 and 26 May, during the crisis of May 1968 in France by the representative of the Pompidou government, the trade unions, and the Organisation patronale...
with the government; on 30 May supporters of the president organised a successful demonstration; new elections were called and at the end of June 1968 the Gaullists were back in power, now occupying three-quarters of the French National Assembly.
On the whole, Cohn-Bendit had participated little in the May 1968 Paris events, which continued without him, but he had become a legend, which was to be used later in the 1990s upon his return to France.
Revolutionary Struggle
In FrankfurtFrankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
in the family house, Cohn-Bendit became one of co-founders of the autonomist group Revolutionärer Kampf (Revolutionary Struggle) in Rüsselsheim
Rüsselsheim
Rüsselsheim is the largest town in the Groß-Gerau district in the Rhein-Main region of Germany. It is one of seven special status towns in Hesse and is located on the Main, only a few kilometres from its mouth in Mainz. The suburbs of Bauschheim and Königstädten are included in Rüsselsheim...
. From this point his fate was linked with Joschka Fischer
Joschka Fischer
Joseph Martin "Joschka" Fischer is a German politician of the Alliance '90/The Greens. He served as Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany in the cabinet of Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005...
, another leader in the group. Both were later to become leaders of the Realo wing of the German Green Party, alongside many former Communist and non-Communist libertarian leftists
Left-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism names several related but distinct approaches to politics, society, culture, and political and social theory, which stress equally both individual freedom and social justice.-Schools of thought:...
.
Some have suggested that the group participated in violent action, which was common in the German extreme left of the early-seventies. But testimony from witnesses appears contradictory, sometimes unreliable. Communal apartments were common on the left, and peaceful political activists could easily have shared living quarters with terrorists, without further collaboration. In 2003 a request was presented by Frankfurt prosecutors to the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
, requesting they waive the immunity of MEP
Member of the European Parliament
A Member of the European Parliament is a person who has been elected to the European Parliament. The name of MEPs differ in different languages, with terms such as europarliamentarian or eurodeputy being common in Romance language-speaking areas.When the European Parliament was first established,...
Cohn-Bendit, in the context of a criminal investigation against the terrorist, Hans-Joachim Klein
Hans-Joachim Klein
Hans-Joachim Klein is a former member of the German left-wing militant group Revolutionary Cells . In 1975 Klein participated in an attack on OPEC headquarters in Vienna organized by Carlos the Jackal, in which he was seriously injured. He publicly renounced political violence two years later...
, but the request was rejected by the assembly.
While Fischer was more concerned with demonstrations, Cohn-Bendit worked in the Karl-Marx-Buchhandlung bookshop and ran a kindergarten. In his 1975 book Le Grand Bazar, he described himself as engaging in sexual activities with very young children at the kindergarten. In 2001 Cohn-Bendit said that the account was invented for purposes of "verbal provocation", and that “I admit that what I wrote is unacceptable nowadays”.
Joining the Greens
In the late 1970s, as many 'rebel' movements were petering out, he became editor of the Pflasterstrand, the alternative magazine which served as house organ to the anarchist-oriented Sponti-Szene in Frankfurt. There he began taking part in the environmental movement's civil agitation against nuclear energy and the expansion of the Frankfurt airport. When the Sponti movement officially accepted parliamentary democracy in 1984 he joined the German Green PartyAlliance '90/The Greens
Alliance '90/The Greens is a green political party in Germany, formed from the merger of the German Green Party and Alliance 90 in 1993. Its leaders are Claudia Roth and Cem Özdemir...
.
In 1988 he published, in French, Nous l'avons tant aimée, la révolution (In English: We Loved It So Much, the Revolution), a book full of nostalgia for the 1968 counter-culture, and announced his shift toward more centrist policies. In 1989 he became deputy mayor of Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, in charge of multicultural affairs. Immigrants made up some 30% of the city at that time. He also developed a more tolerant policy towards drug addicts.
Member of the European Parliament
In 1994 he was elected to the European parliament, though he had been placed only eighth on the electoral list because of his support of military intervention in BosniaBosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...
, as German Greens at the time did not support the resumption of German military intervention abroad.
At the European elections in 1999
European Parliament election, 1999
The European Parliament Election, 1999 was a European election for all 626 members of the European Parliament held across the 15 European Union member states on 10, 11 and 13 June 1999. The voter turn-out was generally low, except in Belgium and Luxembourg, where voting is compulsory and where...
, he re-entered French politics as the leader of the French Green Party (Les Verts
Les Verts
' is the name of various green political parties in French-speaking countries such as:official name:*Les Verts in France;*Les Verts in Luxembourg ;*Les Verts in Benin;*Les Verts in Mauritius;...
) list. He found considerable support in the French media, who often feature him, even when he does not represent or is at odds with the French Green party. He reached 9.72% of votes, a score since then unequalled by the French Greens.
In 2002 he became president of the Green parliamentary group, together with the Italian MEP Monica Frassoni
Monica Frassoni
Monica Frassoni is an Italian politician and was a Member of the European Parliament for the North West of Italy until 2009. She is a member of the Italian Green Party, part of the European Greens. Frassoni was co-chair, together with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, of the European Greens–European Free...
.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s Cohn-Bendit attracted controversy for his independent views. He was criticised from the political right for being a strong proponent of freer immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
, the legalisation of soft drugs, and the abandonment of nuclear power
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
and from the left for his pro-free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
policies, his support for military interventions in Bosnia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...
and Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
and frequent collaboration with centrist personalities (Bernard Kouchner
Bernard Kouchner
Bernard Kouchner is a French politician, diplomat, and doctor. He is co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde...
and François Bayrou
François Bayrou
François Bayrou is a French centrist politician, president of Union for French Democracy since 1998 and was a candidate in the 2002 and 2007 French presidential elections. In the first round, he received 18.6% of the vote, finishing in 3rd place and therefore was eliminated from the race....
for instance).
Cohn-Bendit's disregard for conventional European politics of left and right has made him more unpopular in France than in Germany. The French Green Party and the French left in general remain more attached to these distinctions, whereas in the German Green Party, the moderate Realo wing had already won over the hard-line Fundi
Fundi (politics)
Fundis is short for fundamentalists. The term was used for a faction within the German Green Party. The faction was formed in conflict to the Realo-faction within their party. The term has also been applied to similar conflicts.-General meaning:...
wing, possible alliances with the Conservatives were no longer taboo, and third way
Third way (centrism)
The Third Way refers to various political positions which try to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies. Third Way approaches are commonly viewed from within the first- and second-way perspectives as...
policies under the center-left Gerhard Schröder
Gerhard Schröder
Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder is a German politician, and was Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , he led a coalition government of the SPD and the Greens. Before becoming a full-time politician, he was a lawyer, and before becoming Chancellor...
government, such as Agenda 2010
Agenda 2010
The Agenda 2010 is a series of reforms planned and executed by the German government which are aimed at reforming the German social system and labour market. The declared aim of Agenda 2010 is to improve economic growth and thus reduce unemployment....
and the Hartz I - IV
Hartz concept
The Hartz concept is a set of recommendations that resulted from a commission on reforms to the German labour market in 2002. Named after the head of the commission, Peter Hartz, it went on to become part of the German government's Agenda 2010 series of reforms, known as Hartz I - Hartz IV...
laws, found considerable support. He was also accused of not giving to the French party the percentage of income that all MEPs
MEPS
MEPS can refer to:* Military Entrance Processing Station* Marine Ecology Progress Series, a scientific journal dealing mostly with research in the field of marine ecology.* Methode d’Evaluation des Produits Securitaire “bancaires”...
and other elected members are supposed to give to their party, although the party had officially agreed to exempt him before his first election in France. This, alongside his pro-European
Pro-European
Pro-European is a subjective term applied to a person who supports the idea of European unification and generally supports further 'deepening' of European integration, specifically in the context of political argument over the current and future status of the EU and its policies.-The Pro-European...
attitude, led him to participate in the 2004 European elections on the German side, where he became the highest male candidate on the list and was elected again.
In 2009, Cohn-Bendit criticised Pope Benedict XVI over his comment that condoms only make AIDS worse.
Support for European constitution
In 2003, during the Convention that prepared the text of the European constitution, Cohn-Bendit singled himself out by stating that the countries who would vote No should be compelled to hold a second referendum, and in case of a second No, should be expelled from the European UnionEuropean Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
.
In February 2004, in the context of the preparation of his electoral campaign and in the wider context of the final governmental drafting of the text, he led the foundation of the European Green Party
European Green Party
The European Green Party is the Green political party at European level. As such it is a federation of green parties in Europe.-History:...
in Rome. Fischer had directly participated to the drafting as German minister of foreign affairs, he was considered one of the candidates for the new role of "European minister of Foreign Affairs" evoked in the text, and his speech was the keynote of the event. Cohn-Bendit described the European Green Party as the first stone of European citizenship, but other commentators described this new structure as a mere adaptation of the former Federation of European Green Parties. Just as in the former structure, only delegates from national parties were allowed to vote, individual supporters were only entitled to receive information, and all other federations of European parties had to adapt their statuses later in 2004 to the new regulations from the European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
about European political parties
European political party
A European political party, formally a political party at European level, informally a Europarty, is a type of political party organization operating transnationally in Europe and in the institutions of the European Union. They are regulated and funded by the European Union and are usually made up...
, in order to continue receive public funding. However, Cohn-Bendit as usual was early and energetic in presenting this innovation to the media.
During this congress in Rome he also confirmed his involvement in favour of free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
. He publicly confessed not understanding much about computer terms, but supported license-free software as part of a stronger market economy.
In 2005 he took an active part in the campaign in favour of the European constitution during the French referendum. The treaty was considered by a large part of the left as a European version of globalisation, and Cohn-Bendit became loathed by treaty opponents as one of the symbols of centre-left leaders collaborating with neo-liberalism through international institutions, along with Pascal Lamy
Pascal Lamy
Pascal Lamy is the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, a French political advisor, a businessman, and a former European Commissioner for Trade...
from the Socialist Party. He also singled himself out by appearing publicly with right-wing leaders, contrarily to the tactics adopted by the Green Party
Les Verts
' is the name of various green political parties in French-speaking countries such as:official name:*Les Verts in France;*Les Verts in Luxembourg ;*Les Verts in Benin;*Les Verts in Mauritius;...
and the centre-left during that campaign.
2009 European elections
On 7 June 2009, the European Parliament electionsEuropean Parliament election, 2009
Elections to the European Parliament were held in the 27 member states of the European Union between 4 and 7 June 2009. A total of 736 Members of the European Parliament were elected to represent some 500 million Europeans, making these the biggest trans-national elections in history...
gave Cohn-Bendit a major breakthrough in France. In spite of a conservative victory by Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP Party with 27,9% of the votes and an overall conservative victory all over Europe, Europe Écologie, the coalition founded by Cohn-Bendit, won over 16,28% of the votes, trailing the French Socialist Party led by Martine Aubry (16,48%) by only 0,2%. According to official French results, Cohn-Bendit's list thus became the third political force in France, even overtaking the Socialist Party in the Paris region, and, furthermore by adding the votes of an alternative green party also present in the election, giving greens a never yet experienced weight in French politics. His list featured Franco-Norwegian Magistrate Eva Joly
Eva Joly
Eva Joly is a Norwegian-born French magistrate and politician for the French Green Party.-Early life:Born in Grünerløkka, Oslo, she moved to Paris at 20 to work as an au pair...
, a specialist of anti-corruption struggles, and José Bové
José Bové
Joseph Bové is a French farmer and syndicalist, member of the alter-globalization movement, and spokesman for Via Campesina. He was one of the twelve official candidates in the 2007 French presidential election...
, a controversial unionist.
Spinelli Group
On 15 September 2010 Daniel Cohn-Bendit supported the new initiative Spinelli GroupSpinelli Group
The Spinelli Group is a pro-European initiative that was founded with a view to reinvigorate the strive for federalisation of the European Union , by creating a network of citizens, think tanks, NGOs, academics, writers and politicians who support the idea of a federal and united Europe...
, which was founded to reinvigorate the strive for federalisation of the European Union (EU). Other prominent supporters are: Jacques Delors
Jacques Delors
Jacques Lucien Jean Delors is a French economist and politician, the eighth President of the European Commission and the first person to serve three terms in that office .-French Politics:...
, Joschka Fischer
Joschka Fischer
Joseph Martin "Joschka" Fischer is a German politician of the Alliance '90/The Greens. He served as Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany in the cabinet of Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005...
, Andrew Duff
Andrew Duff
Andrew Duff OBE is a Liberal Democrat politician, president of the Union of European Federalists, and a Member of the European Parliament for the East of England region of the UK....
, Elmar Brok
Elmar Brok
Elmar Brok is a German Member of the European Parliament and the former Chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs. He was elected on the CDU ticket and sits with the European People's Party group...
.
Confrontation with Czech President
In December, 2008 it was reported that Cohn-Bendit had an impolite discussion with Václav KlausVáclav Klaus
Václav Klaus is the second President of the Czech Republic and a former Prime Minister .An economist, he is co-founder of the Civic Democratic Party, the Czech Republic's largest center-right political party. Klaus is a eurosceptic, but he reluctantly endorsed the Lisbon treaty as president of...
, President of the Czech Republic
President of the Czech Republic
The President of the Czech Republic is the head of state of the Czech Republic. Unlike his counterparts in Austria and Hungary, who are generally considered figureheads, the Czech President has a considerable role in political affairs...
, in a meeting held prior to the Czech presidency of the European Union.
Cohn-Bendit reportedly told the Czechs not to interfere with passage of the EU's climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
package.
Confrontation with Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán
Cohn-Bendit, a vocal supporter of HungaryHungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
's green-urban-liberal LMP
Politics Can Be Different
Politics Can Be Different , abbreviated to LMP, is a Hungarian green liberal political party. Founded in 2009, it was one of four parties to win seats in the National Assembly in the 2010 parliamentary election.-History:...
party, had a fiery discussion with conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orbán
Viktor Orbán
Viktor Orbán is a Hungarian populist and conservative politician and current Prime Minister of Hungary...
over a new Hungarian press freedom and media law in a January 2011 EP meeting. Cohn-Bendit stated, amongst others, that Orbán's speech took away his appetite for lunch (alluding to a lunch invitation by Orbán). As a reply, Orbán failed to shake hands with him following the meeting.
Articles
- “Germany Yesterday and Today: A Discussion with Jean-Paul Sartre, Alice Schwarzer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit”. Telos 41 (Fall 1979). New York: Telos Press.
External links
- Daniel Cohn-Bendit
- Detailed autobiography
- German Greens
- French Greens
- Daniel Cohn-Bendit speaks on The Legacy of 1968: A European Perspective, on BUniverse, Boston University's video archive.