“Summer Days” Lorient, France

This year’s “Summer Days Lorient”, organised by Fondation de l’Écologie Politique from the 25th to 27th of August, provided three days of insightful discussions about relevant Green topics, such as Climate and Ecology, Democracy, Migration and many others. More information on the programme and its themes can be found on this webpage.

Green European Foundation participated in two special workshops during this event.

Firstly, the Green European Journal contributed with a debate entitled “Europe, borders and refugees”, on Thursday, the 25th of August from 14h00 to 15h30. This debate focused on the return of borders on the European continent and how the situation with refugees has shaken the European society and its core values, ​​such as freedom and solidarity. This event was hosted with the help of Fondation de l’Écologie Politique and Heinrich Böll Stiftung. It featured Marie Toussaint (BE delegate for Europe), Jens Althoff (Heinrich Böll Stiftung); François Gemenne (University of Liège); Dorothée Schmid (IFRI) and Laurent Standaert (Green European Journal).

As an additional reading for this occasion, we recommended the 12th edition of the Green European Journal: Checkpoint Europe – The Return of Borders.

Secondly, our director Aurélie Maréchal participated as a speaker in a workshop on “Political ecology, 20 years from now”, which took place as well on Thursday, the 25th of August from 14h00 to 15h30. During this workshop, we looked at what greens should do now, as we are confronted with catastrophic scenarios regarding the future of our democracies, along with the political, ecological, social and economic crises.  We also discussed how the new narrative to be developed and the challenges we should anticipate to face 20 years from now. The moderator was Alain Coulombel (member of the Executive Bureau of the French Green party) and the other speakers included Yves Cochet (president of Momentum Institute) and Alice Canabate (sociologist).