ABSTRACT
During the 1980s, a new brand of a political party, usually called ‘Green’ or ecological parties, emerged throughout Western Europe. These new parties were chiefly motivated by the environmental and anti-nuclear concerns which had given rise to substantial protest movements in the 1970s, and they also benefited from the emergence of the peace movements in the early 1980s.1 Despite repeated predictions about their imminent demise, Green parties had established themselves as relatively stable new political actors in many European party systems by the early 1990s. Green representatives had been sitting in the European Parliament since 1984. After the very successful 1989 European elections, the Greens were also able to form their own Green group in the European Parliament whose importance in European politics was reconfirmed in the 1994 elections.
