Member of The European Parliament
In 1994 he was elected to the European parliament, though he had been placed only eighth on the electoral list because of his support of military intervention in Bosnia, as German Greens at the time did not support the resumption of German military intervention abroad.
At the European elections in 1999, he re-entered French politics as the leader of the French Green Party (Les Verts) list. He found considerable support in the French media, who often feature him, even when he does not represent or is at odds with the French Green party. He reached 9.72% of votes, a score since then unequalled by the French Greens.
In 2002 he became president of the Green parliamentary group, together with the Italian MEP Monica Frassoni.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s (decade), Cohn-Bendit attracted controversy for his independent views. He was criticised from the political right for being a strong proponent of freer immigration, the legalisation of soft drugs, and the abandonment of nuclear power and from the left for his pro-free market policies, his support for military interventions in Bosnia and Afghanistan and frequent collaboration with centrist personalities (Bernard Kouchner and François Bayrou for instance).
Cohn-Bendit's disregard for conventional European politics of left and right has made him more unpopular in France than in Germany. The French Green Party and the French left in general remain more attached to these distinctions, whereas in the German Green Party, the moderate Realo wing had already won over the hard-line Fundi wing, possible alliances with the Conservatives were no longer taboo, and third way policies under the center-left Gerhard Schröder government, such as Agenda 2010 and the Hartz I – IV laws, found considerable support. He was also accused of not giving to the French party the percentage of income that all MEPs and other elected members are supposed to give to their party, although the party had officially agreed to exempt him before his first election in France. This, alongside his pro-European attitude, led him to participate in the 2004 European elections on the German side, where he became the highest male candidate on the list and was elected again.
In 2009, Cohn-Bendit criticised Pope Benedict XVI over his comment that condoms only make AIDS worse.
In 2010, he was involved in founding JCall, an advocacy group based in Europe to lobby the European parliament on foreign policy issues concerning the Middle East.
Read more about this topic: Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Famous quotes containing the words member of the, member of, member, european and/or parliament:
“Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class. At a time when I had not yet grasped the significance of the fact that in my house English was a second language, or that I wore dresses while my brother wore pants, I knew—and I knew it was important to know—that Papa worked hard all day long.”
—Vivian Gornick (b. 1935)
“I cannot be indifferent to the assassination of a member of my profession, We should be obliged to shut up business if we, the Kings, were to consider the assassination of Kings as of no consequence at all.”
—Edward VII (1841–1910)
“For love ... has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two feet, two tails, two, indeed, of every member and each one is the exact opposite of the other. Yet, so strictly are they joined together that you cannot separate them.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“At the ramparts on the cliff near the old Parliament House I counted twenty-four thirty-two-pounders in a row, pointed over the harbor, with their balls piled pyramid-wise between them,—there are said to be in all about one hundred and eighty guns mounted at Quebec,—all which were faithfully kept dusted by officials, in accordance with the motto, “In time of peace prepare for war”; but I saw no preparations for peace: she was plainly an uninvited guest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)