The board of the German Left Party has proposed climate and refugee activist Carola Rackete as a member of its top team for next year’s European elections. She is second on the list of candidates after party leader Martin Schirdewan, the party announced on Friday.
With Rackete’s involvement, the left wants to open up to representatives “of social movements and civil society,” said co-party leader Janine Wissler. The personnel decision is also an invitation to anyone who thinks the demands of the left are correct, “but may have had problems with the party”.
Schirdewan described the nomination proposal as a response to the challenges of the time, such as “social inequality, climate crisis, crisis of democracy, threat from the right”.
Captain made headlines around the world in 2019
Rackete became known when she rescued 53 people from the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya in June 2019 as captain of the rescue ship “Sea Watch” and after weeks of waiting despite a ban from the Italian authorities, the port of Lampedusa.
With its candidate list, which has yet to be confirmed by a party congress, the party also wants to distance itself from left-wing MP Sahra Wagenknecht, who has repeatedly taken a critical tone on migration, while Rackete’s commitment has met with sympathy from large parts of the left .
The directional dispute within the party was “decided a long time ago,” Rackete told the “Spiegel”. “You have filed the divorce papers, but you still live in the same house,” she explained, in view of the party leadership’s request to Wagenknecht to return her mandate.
Rackete targets environmental committee
Speaking at the joint press conference, Rackete said of her candidacy that she saw the human right to a “healthy environment, viable ecosystems and a stable Earth’s climate” threatened. The climate crisis is also the “biggest justice crisis in the world”. She wondered where she could make “the biggest difference”.
Rackete has been involved in several social movements and conservation projects in recent years. These depend on the “support of the parliamentary left”. To achieve their goals, “good networking in the institutions” is necessary. In elections, she wants to work in the environment committee of the European Parliament.
Rackete lamented the “ruthless exploitation of our nature for profit” and called for a number of countermeasures: “Socialize fossil fuel companies, raise the money for the necessary transformation of the crisis profiteers and prevent tax evasion from the EU.”
Source: Krone
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