Top candidate Alice Bah Kuhnke is one of the more well-known names running for the EU elections. But the future does not look bright – the Greens are expected to receive lower support than the previous election and the climate is not at the top of the EU’s strategic priorities.
– That’s how it looks right now, it can be affected by the election results on June 9, she says.
Bah Kuhnke believes that the Green Party is one of the Swedish parties that actually prioritizes the climate. An example, according to her, is when the vast majority of parties wanted to reduce emissions by 55 percent until 2030 despite the fact that science says that emissions must be reduced by 70 percent.
– Many other parties say that the climate is important, but when we sit around the negotiating table, it is only us Environmentalists who are in line with what science requires, she says.
Biggest threat to the climate
According to the EU candidate, the extreme right, and that the Swedish Moderates and Christian Democrats have decided to cooperate with them, are the biggest threat to the climate
– The far-right are going to the polls on not only lowering but tearing up EU climate work. We Environmentalists and other progressive democrats in the EU need to keep saying that the climate crisis is the biggest crisis of our time, she says.
“More nurses with electric cars”
Another important issue for the Green Party is that ordinary people are not affected by the measures that need to be taken to achieve change.
– We want fewer rich people with private jets and more nurses with electric cars, that’s where we’re going, she says.
But a climate change is not free, the EU’s climate council has said that the change will cost six thousand billion kroner per year, money that Bah Kuhkne believes is available. Among other things, the EU today provides three hundred billion euros in fossil subsidies that could be spent on the transition, she believes.
– There is money, that is not our big problem – it is political will that is missing, says Alice Bah Kuhnke.
Facts: Alice Bah Kuhnke
Alice Bah Kunke was born in 1971 and grew up in Småland. The top candidate has had a broad career, to say the least, and she has worn several different hats – as TV presenter, head of sustainability, director general and minister. Three days after she became a member of the Green Party, she was appointed Minister of Culture and Minister of Democracy in the government, by then Prime Minister Stefan Löfven.
She left her duties as a minister in 2019, when she was elected to the European Parliament. There, she has mainly worked with issues related to the heart issues of climate, environment, and migration and equal rights. She has also been responsible negotiator for the EU’s textile strategy. Now she hopes to gain renewed confidence as the Green Party’s top name. Her party places itself in the European Parliament’s fourth largest party group, The Greens/EFA – the group for Environmentalists and separatists.
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MP’s top candidate Bah Kuhnke on green transition: “Should not affect ordinary people”
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