What is a political party? What's the use of it? In the last decade these questions have entered the realm of historical philosophy, since they appear to be interesting musings on a construction that, to say the least, is passe. In South America we have seen the coming to power of caudillos that little have to thank to any organized collective, but that rather have created their own unorganized movement. In North America we are seeing a president beleaguered by a polymorph group of people -the tea partiers- that had no interested in politics few years ago, and few desire to get organized today. And Europe camps today with prime ministers and prominent public figures that owe their raise to the growth of anti-politics. Is the idea of a political party still meaningful?

Being daily involved in whatever might be called european politics, that question is of real relevance for me. And not only due to the abstract interest, but also because my own party, the european green party, has set up a "future workgroup", a collective busy with (re)formulating our goals and structures. An interesting exercise no doubt, that even when mired in traditional and rather boring discussions, offer a chance to re-found our own existing right. This workgroup is rounding up his work, being in the last stages of writing a draft proposal, to be discussed and approved in April. Approved if the writers now busy are capable to sort through the many contradicting and opposing views on european democracy, its goals and its middles.

As a matter of fact, one of the key issues that the European Greens have to decide is the status of the INet (short for Individual Supporters Network of the European Green Party). Whatever status will be the INet granted inside the structure of the European Greens, it will be an excellent signal to understand the capabilities of the greens in europe.

This is because the INet is a group of individuals working since almost a decade for transnational activism. With ups and downs, moments of bright success and moments of disappointing defeats, we have been trying to sell to members of green parties all across europe the view of a political action that knows no national borders. A way of political activism that based on the local politician, the city councillor or the town activist, recognizes that political action make sense when projected across the border, whatever border. So we have campaigns for reopening local (and abandoned) trains lines between dutch and german towns, against nuclear centrals that based in a country affect all the neighbors, or for the greening of harbors that determine the economics of a whole european region, rather than one city located in one country. The European Greens are one of the first european families that recognized the need for transeuropean politics, and inside the European Greens, the INet is the party members organization that has been doing their best to make this idea real. The question now is: what do the European Greens want from the INet? And how much political space are they willing to grant us?

Depending on your perspective, the prognosis is encouraging, or depressing. Consider one of the key discussions, membership. Can any european, member of a green political party or not, be member of the INet? Even if this sounds like a retorted question only interesting to old fashioned aparatchniks, it has taken a lot of attention in the internal discussions of many european green parties. Only recently seems that a consensus have been build on allowing anybody to become... supporters. Strange, isn't it? Should you not let anybody become your supporter? Well, party politics are sometimes more contorted than needed.

But that was about hard won consensus. Just yesterday, when meeting the coordination team of the INet, we heard that one of the Belgium green parties, Ecolo, has decided to stop the INet as a whole. They will plea for a takeover of all what we have been doing by the offices of the European Greens in Brussels, deciding in fact that transnational european activism must be thought, planned and implemented from Brussels. Could anybody really imagine that five persons in a Brussels office are humanly capable to coordinate campaigns from Norway to Spain? To understand the political dynamics of all the countries in between? And to act on that?

The fact is that Europe is a wonderfully diverse continent, where a lot of developments are taking place right now. And a lot of individuals, organized or not, are taking an active interest in politics. Only looking at the past few days we heard about protests in Rome on a confidence vote on Berlusconi, about extended demonstrations against budget cuts in England, about a suicide bomber in Stockholm. Not to mention the brave new world that the whole diplomatic corps is facing in the wake of wikileaks disclosures. Can somebody really believe that in such a landscape a centralized direction can move anything at all?

The issues that I mention are, actually, not random. If you think about them, every one of them illustrate the bankruptcy that political parties face today. Every one of my examples has the potentiality of changing the political dynamic in the place of occurrence first and in europe after. And none of these events have been coordinated or generated... By a political party. None at all.

Do the European Greens want to play a role in the complex landscape of european politics today? Do we want to be a motor of change and progress? I have believed all my life that the answers to these questions are a resonant yes. But then, if we greens really want to be factors of progress in europe, we can not amputate the initiative of our own members that connects individuals across borders. With all their inefficiencies and problems, the INet is the group inside the European Green Party that has understood long ago that a european demos must be constructed by individuals. If the  future of the European Greens do not support embrace and work on the INet... Well... What are political parties for, after all?