The oldest and youngest members of the European Parliament pledge to fight for environmental sustainability and minority rights, in an interview with Euronews.
Fifty-three years and five months separate Leoluca Orlando and Lena Schilling, the oldest and youngest members of the European Parliament.
Both are part of the Green/Ale group, where they arrived with very different political and personal trajectories.
The veteran politician and the young activist
Orlando comes from the southern tip of Europe, Sicily. He is 76 years old and has a long political career behind him. For 32 years, he was mayor of Palermo, a complicated city he governed in the aftermath of the 1992 mafia massacres that killed judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
During his first mandates, from 1985 to 1990, he gave life to what has been called the ‘Springtime of Palermo’, a period of rebirth of the 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 by radically altering its urban viability.
Orlando was already an MEP from 2004 to 2009, and returns to occupy a seat thirty years later, in a very different European Union.
“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, on the other hand, is a 23-year-old climate activist who entered politics for the first time after demonstrations with Fridays for Future in her country, Austria – one of the few veterans of the so-called green wave that swept Europe in 2019 and lost momentum in this election.
Her candidacy was on the brink of collapse following the publication by the newspaper Der Standard of private conversations in which Schilling discussed plans to get elected and then leave the Green/Ale group to join the Left group.
The case sparked a bitter debate in the country, even prompting an intervention in her defence by the President of the Republic Alexander Van der Bellen.
Today Lena Schilling is a member of the Parliament’s Environment Commission, while Leoluca Orlando is a full member of the Foreign Affairs Commission.
Both promise a battle on the issues of environmental sustainability and minority rights, in an interview with Euronews.
Who do they want to represent in the European Parliament?
Schilling says “An entire generation that has been demonstrating in the streets for years”. “I am a climate activist, and I, myself, have been involved in occupations of buildings to prevent, perhaps, the construction of a road,” she adds.
Orlando says “The Mediterranean. I want to bring the Mediterranean closer to Europe”.
What are their goals?
“I want to protect nature. I want to fight for climate justice and I want to fight for young people who are in the streets all over the world,” is Schilling’s answer.
“Also, we now have the most right-wing parliament ever. I will also fight against the far right”.
ADVERTISEMENTOrlando, on the other hand, 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 to bring our will for peace: no more of this mad arms race. I want to bring the will to finally recognise the State of Palestine and condemn the genocide of the Italian government against the Palestinian people. I want to bring a message of environmental justice and social justice”.
What does the European Union need today?
According to Schilling, a strong commitment to accelerate climate policies and bring about all the necessary transformations in industry, energy and also in transport is needed. “All this is absolutely necessary,” she says.
Orlando believes the EU needs fewer borders, fewer weapons, and more peace.
ADVERTISEMENT“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 not reserved for long-time politicians or young activists, as they pointed out in an Instagram video.
