THE GREENS: A NATIONAL EUROPEAN CAMPAIGN.

Even though the Greens are a small party in Luxembourg and cannot realistically hope to secure more than one of the country's six seats in the European Parliament, their European campaign has plenty of dynamism. It is geographically and politically European, with keen involvement of all the outgoing Green MEPs. About two thirds of texts adopted by Luxembourg's Parliament concern the transposition of European Directives into national law, proof of the importance of European themes in the country's political life. The people of Luxembourg are generally pro-European, perhaps in part because frontiers are never very far away in the Grand Duchy and because 37% of inhabitants are not Luxembourg nationals, a rate that rises above 50% every day with cross-border workers coming in. "The country is a mini Europe", according to Claude Turmes, Green candidate for the European Parliament.

The Greens' common campaign for the European elections was launched at the end of April at a Summit at the European Parliament in Brussels, decorated for the occasion with sunflowers, the emblem of Europe's Greens. The "Dream Team" of Green representatives presented a summary document on the successes of the Greens group in the European Parliament since 1999 and a "Green contract for Europe: 44 proposals for the next Parliament" (http://www.greens-efa.org/fr/priorities/?id=4). The Greens group in the outgoing European Parliament had 45 MEPs, out of the total of 626. Despite their modest size, the Greens succeeded - alone or with other groups - in pushing through more than 120 initiatives in plenary session at the EP since October 2000.

Luxembourg's Greens officially launched their campaign on May 1, six weeks before the elections. No opinion polls have been published since May 13. The Greens' campaign slogan is "Neit Kapital fir Letzebuerg" (a new capital for Luxembourg) with a view to improving the link between citizens and civil society and political decisions: "only well informed citizens can take the right political decisions". Campaign theme are mostly national but a chapter of the Greens' manifesto is devoted to Europe.

Manifesto.

On defence, the Greens feel that a genuine European army only has any sense if it leads to the disbanding of national armies. They are however opposed to the notion of transforming the EU into a military power and are therefore calling on NATO to dismantle its conventional and nuclear arms.

The Greens support full co-decision "with the...