Rebecca Harms | |
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| Member of the European Parliament | |
| In office 20 July 2004 – 2019 | |
| Constituency | Germany |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1956-12-07)7 December 1956 (age 69) |
| Party | German: Alliance '90/The Greens EU: The Greens–European Free Alliance |
| Website | www.rebecca-harms.de |
Rebecca Harms (born 7 December 1956) is a German politician who served asMember of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2004 until 2019. She is a member of theAlliance '90/The Greens, part of theEuropean Green Party. From 2010 until 2016 she served as president ofThe Greens–European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament.
Harms was born into a traditional working-class household[1] and grew up in a village nearUelzen inLower Saxony. She finished school with theAbitur in 1975 and began her career with anapprenticeship inplant nursery and landscapegardening.[2] During her apprenticeship years, she moved with like-minded friends to an abandoned farm in the nearby district ofLüchow-Dannenberg and joined a local organic farmers’ co-operative.[3]
During the following years, Harms became active in theanti-nuclear movement and began to study atuniversity. In 1984Undine-Uta Bloch von Blottnitz [de] employed her as an advisor after being elected to theEuropean Parliament. She returned to her home in 1988 to work as a production manager at the Wendland Film Co-operative, producing, among other films, documentaries about the Gorleben protest movement.[4]
From 1994 to 2004, Harms was a member of theLandtag of Lower Saxony. From 1998 she served as chairwoman of her party on the state level. She has since been a member of theParteirat, the federal leadership body of Germany's Green Party.
In2004, Harms was the top candidate of the Alliance 90/The Greens for theElections to the European Parliament and in2009 she was elected again for parliament. Ahead of the2014 elections, she lost out against fellow German MEPSka Keller to lead the European Greens’ campaign alongsideJosé Bové; however, she eventually led the German Green Party in the election campaign.[5]
In her first term in parliament, Harms was a member of theCommittee on Industry, Research and Energy. Between 2007 and 2009, she served as Vice Chairwoman of the Temporary Committee onClimate Change; she was part of the European Parliament's delegations to the2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference inBali[6] and the2008 United Nations Climate Change Conference inPoznań.[7]
Harms led theGreens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament from 2009, at first alongsideDaniel Cohn-Bendit (2009–2014) and laterPhilippe Lamberts (2014–2016). In addition, she was a member of the Committee of Inquiry into Emission Measurements in the Automotive Sector (dealing with theVolkswagen emissions scandal) from 2016. From 2017 until 2019, she served as chairwoman of the delegation to theEuronest Parliamentary Assembly, which deals with relations with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
On the national level, Harms was a Green Party delegate to theFederal Convention for the purpose of electing thePresident of Germany in 2004 and 2012.
In October 2016, Harms announced that she would resign from her position as co-chairwoman of the Greens–European Free Alliance.[8] Since beginning of 2017, she is the chairwoman of the delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, and Member of the Conference of Delegation Chairs. She is member of theCommittee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and the Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Association Committee, as well as the delegation to the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee. As Substitute Member, she is on theCommittee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and theCommittee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI). She also represented the European Parliament in theOSCE/ODIHR international observation mission for the2019 Moldovan parliamentary election.[9]
In July 2018, Harms announced that she would not stand in the2019 European elections but instead resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term.[10]
Living in theWendland region which became known nationwide for theGorleben atomic waste site, Harms is a declared opponent ofnuclear power. In 2006, she commissioned two UK scientists for an alternate report, entitledTORCH, to the disputed November 2005 IAEA report on the consequences of theChernobyl disaster. She has been an outspoken critic of EU funding for the experimentalInternational Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) fusion project, money that, in her view, would be better spent on research into renewable energy.[11] After European Union leaders in 2011 decided thatnuclear reactors across all 27 member nations should undergo safety tests in response to the continuing radiation leaks from theFukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, Harms criticized that the tests were "designed to give the impression that there’s a new evaluation of the risks of nuclear power" but instead are meant "to win new acceptance for nuclear power."[12]
After German newsmagazineDer Spiegel reported in 2013 that American intelligence agencies had monitored the offices of the European Union in New York and Washington,[13] Harms called for a special committee to investigate the claims and the possible cancellation of existing agreements between the European Union and the United States concerning bank transaction information and airline passenger data.[14]
During the war against Ukraine, Harms – a longtime critic of Putin[15] – made a number of statements supporting Ukraine and criticizing Moscow. In December 2013, she addressed the thousands of Ukrainians inMaidan Nezalezhnosti protesting the regime's rejection of a pact with the European Union.[16] In the context of European efforts to unify their political response to Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, Harms claimed that “in the face of a new threat of war in Europe, EU states have indeed agreed on a joint strategy towards Russia.”[17] In April 2015, Harms therefore sharply criticizedPrime MinisterAlexis Tsipras ofGreece for threatening to break ranks on theEU sanctions against Russia over the Russo-Ukrainian war, calling his visit toPresidentVladimir Putin “clearly pro-Russian and anti-European.“[18]
Harms was a member of the parliament's monitoring mission during theUkrainian parliamentary elections in 2014, led byAndrej Plenković.[19]
On 25 September 2014 Harms, who had arrived inMoscow to witness the court trial againstNadiya Savchenko, was denied entrance to theRussian Federation and was announced aspersona non grata.[20] She was informed that her entrance to Russia could be qualified as a crime.[21] In 2015, news media reported that Harms was indeed included in a Russian blacklist of prominent people from theEuropean Union who are not allowed to enter the country.[22][23]
When Finland announced plans in 2014 to build a nuclear reactor in cooperation with Russian firmRosatom and on the condition that Finland maintains an energy partnership with Russia over the subsequent years, Harms described the decision as "wrong". She insisted that "with a Russian partner, it is even worse," as this was "totally contrary to the EU's energy security goals, which aim to cut the EU's damaging dependency on Russian energy."[24]
Harms is fundamentally supportive of theEuropean Commission’s 2015 proposal for an Energy Union, but warned that while reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian energy imports "we escape into the arms ofAzerbaijan orKazakhstan instead of the home-grown renewables sector."[25]
Along with other senior MEPs from the European Parliament's main groups – includingElmar Brok andGuy Verhofstadt –, Harms signed a 2016 letter to EU foreign relations chiefFederica Mogherini in which they urge the EU to impose sanctions on Russian officials over the killing of anti-corruption activistSergei Magnitsky.[26]
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