In an interview with Euronews, the oldest and youngest members of the European Parliament pledge to fight for environmental sustainability and minority rights.
Fifty-three years and five months separate Leoluca Orlando and Lena Schilling, the oldest and youngest MEPs in the new European Parliament.
Both are part of the Green/EFA group, where they arrived with very different political and personal trajectories.
Orlando, 76, comes from Sicily, where he has spent a long political career. He served a total of 22 years as mayor of the island’s capital, Palermo — a city with a complex and complicated history he governed in the aftermath of the 1992 mafia massacres that killed judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
During his first term, from 1985 to 1990, he oversaw what has been called the “Springtime of Palermo”, a period of rebirth for a city long bloodied by mafia feuds. In the new millennium, among other things, he has dedicated himself to making the Sicilian capital more environmentally sustainable.
Orlando has served as an MEP before, from 1994 to 1999; now he returns to a Brussels very different from the one he knew before.
“Fortunately, digital has freed us from mountains of paper translated into all languages,” he recalls. “Thirty years ago the problem was how to guarantee the laws of states. Now it is how to guarantee the rights of Europeans.”
Schilling, meanwhile, is a 23-year-old Austrian climate activist who entered politics for the first time just a few years ago. Having been elected for the first time in June, she is carrying the torch for the so-called “green wave” that swept Europe in 2019 but receded sharply in this year’s elections.
Her candidacy briefly appeared on the brink of collapse when the newspaper Der Standard reported private conversations in which Schilling discussed plans to first get elected and then leave the Green/Ale group to join the Left group.
The story sparked a bitter debate in Austria, even prompting an intervention in her defence by the Austrian president, Alexander Van der Bellen — a Green Party member himself.
Today, Schilling is a member of the Parliament’s Environment Commission, while Orlando is a full member of the Foreign Affairs Commission. So what do they stand for?
Who do they represent and what are their goals?
Schilling says she stands for “an entire generation that has been demonstrating in the streets for years”.
“I am a climate activist, and I’ve been involved in occupations of buildings to prevent, say, the construction of roads,” she says.
Orlando, meanwhile, puts it simply: “The Mediterranean. I want to bring the Mediterranean closer to Europe”.
“I want to protect nature,” says Schilling. “I want to fight for climate justice and I want to fight for young people who are in the streets all over the world.
“Also, we now have the most right-wing parliament ever. I will also fight against the far right”.
Orlando, meanwhile, says he wants to combine social justice and environmental justice, “guaranteeing the rights of young people in the Mediterranean who have to choose to be Europeans”.
“I want peace,” he declares. “No more of this mad arms race. I want to bring the will to finally recognise the State of Palestine and condemn the genocide against the Palestinian people. I want to bring a message of environmental justice and social justice.”
As Schilling sees it, the EU needs to accelerate its climate policies and make a solid commitment to transformations in industry, energy and also in transport. “All this is absolutely necessary,” she says.
Orlando believes the EU needs fewer borders, fewer weapons, and more peace.
“It needs more sustainable development and less oil. Europe needs more reception and less of a sectarian approach to migrants. It needs to save more lives rather than deliver so many migrants into the hands of states where fundamental rights are not respected”.
To pursue their goals, they will need both experience and enthusiasm, qualities that don’t belong solely to either longtime politicians or young activists — a fact they pointed out together in an Instagram video.
