HERE, AT LAST

To the contrary, it is a book about bold and courageous people who are fighting against a legacy of nationalism, against the plunder of the warlords, and against social injustice and environmen- tal degradation in the brutal political realities of the Balkans. [...] What were the begin- nings, and how was the scene set up for, or by, the new changemakers? That mainly relates to the opportunities and incentives – and sometimes the protagonists – that created the space for the appearance of green political platforms. [...] The German Greens’ foreign policy in the late 1990s was strongly tied to the developments in the region (particularly during the mandate of Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, one of the leading figures of the Greens for many decades). [...] In the spirit of the strong and appealing quote of Hein- rich Böll (“Meddling is the only way to stay relevant”), the Foundation 41 supported the boldest political actions to challenge the status quo, confront the recent past burdened with war crimes, support state-building and human rights protections, and last but not least – address the increasing environmental degradation across the region. [...] Although green politics was the past and is the future of Western Europe, it has only just emerged in the southeast of the continent, whose development was heavily disrupted and downgraded by the decade of war in the 1990s.17 One of the signs of pre-war normality was the fact that Greens were al- ready in the early 1990s on election ballots, and politicians from Croatia and Slovenia were elected a.