Viola von Cramon has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2009. She is a member of the minority Green Party that garnered more than 30 percent of voters’ support during the last election. She is a member of the Bundetag’s Committee for European Affairs. The first part of the interview can be read here.
Kyiv Post: What factors explain the rise of your party to the position of Germany’s third major political player? Will this rise continue?
Viola von Cramon: In Germany, people have become tired of listening to the same old politicians offering the same old ideas all the time. Over the years the citizens have become acutely aware of the urgent importance of protecting the environment – not just because of the terrible catastrophes in Ukraine and Japan, but also because of the whole question of energy. Our party started to develop new concepts in those fields more than 10 years ago. The Green movement in Germany is presently still growing, but whether this trend will last until the next federal elections in 2013 is something nobody can accurately predict.
KP: Which Ukrainians are you in contact with and what issues are you discussing?
VVC: I talked to [Regions Party member of parliament] Olena Bondarenko in Strasbourg and we decided that we would work on the common motion to support women in former Soviet Union states. If you look at the status of women in Soviet Union and now you see that women’s influence is less and it is still decreasing. Look at your current government, there is not a single woman as a member of the cabinet. [Prime Minister Mykola] Azarov simply said that women and politics are incompatible. There is not a single governor woman in Ukraine. What does government do on official level to support woman’s rights? Zero. Before you at least had Yuliya Tymoshenko as a woman – head of the government – and now nobody!
KP: Does anyone in Germany take Ukrainian prospects for European Union membership seriously?
VVC: Nobody touches this right now. All enlargement discussions are completely frozen, even with Turkey, which has been in line for 40 years already. I think it was too early to give full membership to Romania and Bulgaria. A lot of people regret it now and are trying to keep everyone else out of European Union. Thus there is no discussion about Ukrainian membership in the foreseeable future.
Olena Tregub is a freelance correspondent for the Kyiv Post based in Washington, D.C.
