Responding to the news that the former Green Party leader Alexander Van der Bellen has been elected as the new president of Austria, after an exceptionally tight battle with far-right candidate Norbert Hofer, Keith Taylor, Green Party MEP for the South East of England, said:
“This is fantastic news, and proof that people across Europe are seeing that now is the time for a new kind of politics. The political times, they are a’changing and voters are, clearly, no longer willing to keep electing the wrong people in the hope they will do the right thing.
“After emerging triumphant in a battle against a far-right candidate, Alexander Van der Bellen, the first Green president of Austria, has a tough job ahead of him, but I and my Green Party colleagues and friends from across Europe wish him well. The more green politicians we have in public office the more chance we have of tackling the cross-border problems of climate change and combating the failed politics of austerity. Europe is waking up to the fact that social and environmental justice are indivisible – and essential to all of our futures. This is a triumph of Green vision.”
Derek Wall, the party’s international coordinator, said:
'Green politics provides an alternative to the politics of fear and hate. It is wonderful that Van der Bellan has won defeating the xenophobic Freedom Party however a tide of populist anti-refugee rhetoric is threating the European Union.'