At the popular market in Kolonaki, no one knows “Green & Purple”. Vasiliki Grammatikoyanni, co-chairman of the newly formed party, has been on Xenocratus Street since 10 am. She is here alone. No barking, no staff. A 58-year-old woman with party leaflets and personal cards made from recycled paper tries to find voters among Kolonaki residents who are buying vegetables and fruits.

“Good morning,” he says with a smile, moving from one stall to another, “I don’t know if you have heard of us at all, we are in a very good position in terms of agriculture.” Even though no salesperson’s eyes light up when he hears “Green & Purple”, he doesn’t ignore it. They listen to her. Some are interested enough to ask her for a card. Others ask questions: “What is green and purple?”.

It is a party created in January and made up of seven different combinations: The Greens, Green Environments, Green Solidarity, Greek Volt, Animal Party, Hellenic Pirate Party and Ecofeminist Circle. Movement. Two weeks ago, the party released the first 100 names of candidates who will run with Green and Purple in the national election. “There will be 220 candidates in total,” says Ms Grammatikoyanni “K”. “The first goal of this union was to unite the green spaces of Greece,” he says. But the ultimate goal is to present an alternative political position based on the belief that the environment is interconnected with the economy and society. “We are in a state of collapse of the system as we know it, and society is demanding radical change,” he states, “Without alliances and without partnership, we cannot respond to this polycrisis.”

A lot of things are done differently at this party, and it’s not just the recycled paper used for flyers and postcards. Initially, there are no leaders, but there are co-leaders, Ms. Grammatikoyanni and Domenikos Chrysidis, who were chosen by party members after they first decided they wanted a woman and a man as leaders. “I’m 58 and Domenikos is 33, we wanted to show the connection between generations,” she explains.

Then, it’s how they run the race. They have no sponsors and do not want to hold traditional political events. A few weeks ago, they hosted an election party at their offices in the former Olympia Hotel in Athens, where old tables replace tables. “Because we stand for recycling, we also recycle buildings,” says Ms. Grammatikoyanni. At the party, water was served in jugs (bottled water is not drunk). The food was prepared by the manager’s wife, it was vegetarian and only from organic products. The music was world music from refugee communities. When the party was over, party officials sorted out all the garbage and sent it for recycling. “It has been a way of life for us for many years,” emphasizes she, a journalist who has been covering green space since 2009.

“We are the only party co-chairs who used to travel by train, but now we travel by bus,” Domenikos Chrysidis, who has been living and working in Brussels for the past ten years, tells K. “Which of the other party leaders is taking the bus to Larissa?” he is asking. He doesn’t drive himself—he doesn’t even have a driver’s license—of his own accord. “I maintain sustainable mobility, walking or cycling, and in Greece I will take a taxi as a last resort. This is not necessary even in Belgium, only in Greece, where public transport has existed since the last decade,” he says.

Both of them, like most of their leaders, are vegetarians, but emphasize that this is not a criterion. “What do you eat, politics? That’s the way it is,” says Mr. Chrysidis. “We at Green & Purple will not tell people what to eat – we will raise the bar so that what we eat is healthier, there must be standards for what we eat to protect the economy, the planet and ourselves. A large meat industry must work according to some rules, and these rules must be established by politics, ”he emphasizes. As a first step, they want to introduce rules for mass breeding so that the animals do not suffer, so that they are not “what we eat inside the hormones”, and seek to limit hunting.

“Green and Purple” supports the green transition. “If people think that we are only talking about the environment, they are wrong,” Chrysidis says. “We are talking about a fair green transition that everyone, everyone, everyone will benefit from, we are talking about a different way of doing the economy,” he adds and explains: “Green transition” is public transport. “How do you move, how much does it cost you and the environment, what is the ecological and climate footprint. We want the green choice in the everyday life of a city dweller to be easier, safer, cheaper,” he emphasizes. Safer and more frequent MMM routes, the ability to cycle to work. “Besides, as we have seen, we don’t have safe trains, we don’t have safe buses, we don’t have safe bike lanes,” he says.

The green transition is of course also about energy. “From heating our house and how we cook to the Ertflix movie you watch at night, everything has to be powered by renewable energy,” says Mr. Chrysidis. He stresses that we need to increase the number of solar installations in order to bring renewable energy to the public’s attention with the right technology that will both generate energy for us and protect biodiversity. “The whole of Greece must work with its light, water and wind,” he says.

One of their goals is to set rules in mass breeding “so that animals do not suffer and are not what we eat in hormones.”

He believes that green politics offers something radical, and although he says that the Greens in the European Parliament belong to the centre-left, he notes that the Greens and Purples are “well above the barrier between left and right, the barriers of the traditional parties that led country to such a state. Green policy is “fundamental,” he stresses. “This redefinition of how the economy works distorts social impact—whatever you do, you need a serious state,” he says, which is why real reforms are needed.

This anti-systemic argument cannot be put forward by SYRIZA, for example, says Ms. Grammatikoyanni. “Because they ruled and tried to govern within this system. Are you going to tell me you’re going to change the system? speaks. “No,” he answers, “we will not change, it is not so easy to change, we just see solutions. The economy is inseparable from climate change and the environment, we link the damage from climate change to the economy, we believe we need a Green New Deal that addresses both environmental and societal challenges because they are interconnected.” It speaks of the shortcomings in the market. “It’s not just about inflation, everything we have comes from natural resources that are being depleted. When food fields are destroyed, it means there is a shortage of food, very expensive food, it is connected, governments have not yet linked it,” he gives an example.

Also the purple part. “The issue of rights is central. Green and purple stands for an open and equal society,” says Mr. Chrysidis. “Many times they think that we are only for the environment, trees and animals. We are also for them, but we want a healthy economy, support for a private sector that has innovation and a social and green sign, for Greece to take its destiny into its own hands. We demand that there be a serious country to return, what could be more reasonable?” states.

The discussion of the union of green combinations in Greece also took place in connection with the initiatives of the “European Green Party, which wanted the unification of green spaces in Greece,” says Ms Grammatikoyannis. Both she and Mr Chrysidis ran in the 2019 European elections, long before Green & Purple was formed. Of the party’s MP candidates, two are former MEPs, Michalis Tremopoulos, founding member of the Greens, and Nikos Chrysogelos, former head of the Ecological Greens, co-chair of the Greens – Solidarity, founding member of the Greens.

While in other European countries such as Germany and Belgium the Green parties are in power, in Greece the political presence of the Green parties is almost non-existent. In the 2019 European elections, environmental greens received 0.87%. Greek environmentalists scored 0.20%, while Green Ecologists – Solidarity – 0.45%. In January 2015, the Eco Greens lost in the national elections along with SYRIZA and the Greens lost with the Democrats of the Left, with the latter gaining 0.49%. Why did the green parties in Greece fail to gain not only power but also political influence?

Giorgos Pagulatos, a professor at the Athens University of Economics and the CEO of ELIAMEP, told K that perhaps it has to do with faces. “There were no figures who could overcome the differences between the various environmental organizations and make the party attractive to the electorate,” he says, adding that the most “serious” figures in the environmental movement have tended to join the larger parties of the Left over time.

“Of course, green spaces are also responsible,” says Ms Grammatikoyanni. “Greenerites may not have been able to get the message of a serious green policy proposal across,” says Mr. Chrysidis. “The way they got it across was wrong or not enough.” There was a myth that the environmental movement could not develop in Greece because we did not solve the country’s main problems, because the country is not at the level of development and prosperity of Western European countries, he says, which is not true. “Because we have beautiful nature and we have no shortage of water, we cannot think that natural resources are finite, we took it for granted, and when we saw an MEP riding a bicycle, we said: “I will vote for this idiot?” notes Ms. Grammatikoyannis.

But now that people are more aware of the environmental factor, do they think they have hope for elections?

“No one is going to lose an election,” she emphasizes, “we are optimistic because we think that people are asking for something else.” “There are Greeks who believe that bold policies are needed to deal with the climate crisis,” says Mr. Chrysidis. “There are Greeks who don’t want a client state, who see the state institutionally slipping away, who want an open society, these Greeks should vote green and purple.

At the end of the interview, I ask two or three friends with severe environmental problems if they know the party. “This is the first time I hear this,” they say.