In a campaign where all his opponents will be men aged over 50 with already a long political career behind them, his presence stands out and will undoubtedly create fault lines. Monday January 22, in the midst of rising tensions around climate policies, the leadership of the Austrian Greens made the radical choice to propose to its activists, as head of the list for the European elections in June, the country’s most famous climate activist: Lena Schilling, political science student, barely 23 years old.
The youthful face of this Viennese woman with long wavy hair is known throughout the Central European country since she locally led the demonstrations of the Fridays for Future movement, launched by the Swede Greta Thunberg from 2018. In 2021, she then became one of the leading figures in the long movement to occupy a Viennese wetland threatened with destruction as part of a project to build a motorway tunnel under the Danube. The site ultimately had to be abandoned under pressure from environmentalists.
“As an activist, I was in the streets for five years. The question was: what would be the next step? “, she explained, in a daily maintenance Der StandardMonday January 22, stating his need “to go where the levers of power are, where climate change and social justice are blocked: in politics”.
In 2022, she nevertheless sharply criticized the electoral system in her book Radikale Wende (“Radical Change”, not translated), believing that the elections were “certainly relevant, but ineffective”. Furthermore, a few months ago, she was still giving interviews in which she stated: “Fridays for Future activists will never go to the Greens, [car] we no longer trust them to keep their promises. »
“Fighting the wind of reaction”
“At the same time, perspectives sometimes change”she now pleads, recognizing that the climate protest movement has run out of steam a little. “There are attacks from the far right all over Europe. But we must fight the wind of reaction and it is good that a courageous young woman is taking action against it.”greeted Werner Kogler, the leader of the Austrian Greens.
This choice should allow the party, which has governed since 2020 in coalition with the conservatives, to try to save its three MEP seats, while the polls are currently significantly less favorable than the historic results obtained in the 2019 European elections. .
You have 30% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.