Founded 1978 Political position Left-wing | Newspaper Cactus | |
 | ||
Spokespersons Hans Heiss
Brigitte Foppa Headquarters via Bottai/Bindergasse 5
39100 Bolzano Ideology Green politics
Social democracy
Regionalism | ||
The Greens (Verdi–Grüne–Vërc) are a green, regionalist and social-democratic political party active in South Tyrol, northern Italy. Once the provincial section of the Federation of the Greens, the South Tyrolean Greens are an autonomous party and often form different alliances at the country-level (most recently with Italian Left).
Contents
The Greens are ethnically mixed and strive to improve the relations between the three language groups of the Province: Italian-, German- and Ladin-speakers. Since 2016 the party has been led by spokespersons Hans Heiss and Brigitte Foppa.
In the 2013 provincial election the Greens obtained 8.7% of the vote.
History
The Greens have their roots in the New Left and the environmental movements of the 1970s. They started to compete in elections in 1978, but were formally registered as a party only in 1996. From 1978 to 1996 they used different names: New Left (1978), Alternative List (1983), Green Alternative List (1988) and finally Greens (1993). One of the founders and most active members of the Greens was Alexander Langer, who committed suicide in 1995.
Other than in the Landtag of South Tyrol, the party was succesively represented in the European Parliament by Langer (1989–1995) and mountaineer Reinhold Messner (1999–2004).
In the 2003 provincial election the party obatained 7.9% of the vote and three provincial councillors: Cristina Kury, Sepp Kusstatscher (a former member of the South Tyrolean People's Party, SVP) and Hans Heiss.
In the 2004 European Parliament election, the Greens won 13.1% of the vote in the Province, their best result ever, and sent Kusstatscher to the European Parliament, replacing Messner.
In the 2008 provincial election the Greens won only the 5.8% of the vote, losing votes (-2.1%) and one seat from 2003. The two elected Green councillors were Heiss and Riccardo Dello Sbarba, who succeeded to Kusstatscher.
In the 2013 general election the Greens did not follow the national party into the Civil Revolution alliance and decided instead to support Left Ecology Freedom, which included Green Florian Kronbichler in its slate. Kronbichler was the first German-speaking South Tyrolean to be elected in a list different from SVP's.
In the 2013 provincial election the Greens won 8.7% of the vote (+2.9%), their record high in a provincial election, and sent three elects to the Provincial Council: Heiss, Dello Sbarba and Brigitte Foppa.
In the 2014 European Parliament election, the Greens supported the left-wing electoral alliance The Other Europe, but its candidate Oktavia Brugger was not elected.
In the 2015 municipal election in Merano, the second-largest municipality in South Tyrol after the capital Bolzano, Green Paul Rösch was elected mayor with 60.7% of the vote in the run-off: it was the first time that the Greens were to win a large municipality.
Popular support
The Greens won 8.7% of the vote in the most recent provincial election in 2013. They obtained their highest shares in five small municipalities: Urtijëi (13.9%), Bronzolo (13.7%), Montan (12.8%), Auer (12.4%) and Glurns (11.7%). Despite this, the party was usually stronger in cities than in rural areas: it did well in the three largest cities (11.4% in Bolzano, 10.6% in Merano and 11.0% in Brixen), while it did worse in the four most rural districts – Vinschgau (7.3%, despite Glurns), Salten-Schlern (7.2%, despite Urtijëi), Pustertal (6.9%, despite 11.6% in Bruneck) and Wipptal (6.5%) – and in Ladin municipalities (5.9%, despite Urtijëi).
Previous elections showed similar patterns of the vote.
The electoral results of the Greens in South Tyrol since 1992 are shown in the table below.
Leadership
Spokesperson: Carlo Bertorelle (1996–1998), Leander Moroder (1998–2006), Franco Bernard (2006–2009), Sepp Kusstatscher and Brigitte Foppa (2009–2013), Giorgio Zanvettor and Brigitte Foppa (2014–2016), Hans Heiss and Brigitte Foppa (2016–present)