2023-08-18 16:33:11
The world discovered Carola Rackete’s dreadlocks and sweet face four years ago on the island of Lampedusa. The German, at the controls of the Sea-Watch 3, had just forced the blockade imposed by the Italian government to deposit, after two weeks of waiting on the high seas, about fifty migrants fished out in the Mediterranean.
The controversy over the brief house arrest of “Captain Courage”, as the press dubbed her, led to the breakdown of the coalition between the 5 Star Movement (anti-system) and the League (extreme right) of the Minister of Health. Interior Matteo Salvini.
Running for a seat in the European Parliament
After four years of relative anonymity, the 35-year-old activist is in the running to join the European Parliament. The leadership of the radical left party Die Linke recently placed her second on the list for the June 2024 elections.
An application in the form of the opposite: “My agreement with the party has been from the start that I will not work on migration policyexplains the one that targets the Environment Committee in the Parliament of Strasbourg. The media figure of the sea rescue heroine that has been constructed does not correspond to who I am and what I am working on. »
The young woman describes her period on the Sea-Watch 3 like a project ” additional “. Expert in nature protection, after having carried out nautical studies, Carola Rackete specialized in the polar regions. By her own count, she’s been on assignment a dozen times in Antarctica and several times in the Arctic, the last in March for a whale-watching trip. With a group of activists, she supported the Sami communities in Norway, confronted with the consequences of climate change and the appetites of big economic interests.
Die Linke, a party that wants to be ambitious
With her candidacy, Carola Rackete takes the leap towards traditional politics, considering that environmental civil society “lack of parliamentary relay” to articulate their claims. In the eyes of this follower of degrowth, the environmentalist party Die Grünen, member of the coalition in power in Berlin, follows a “neoliberal line”while Die Linke wants to be more ambitious, setting itself the objective of carbon neutrality from 2035, ten years ahead of the government’s timetable.
The left-wing activist already has in his sights projects by the European Parliament’s Environment Committee concerning the establishment, on the model of the carbon market, of certificates intended to compensate for water pollution and the destruction of biodiversity. “We need clear regulation with sanctions and not a brokerage system where we shift the damage”, she says. Financing an ecological, socially just transition will be at the heart of his fight, with the idea of making the large fossil fuel conglomerates pay.
A party undermined by internal conflicts
His appointment also symbolizes the will of the leadership of Die Linke to clarify the conflict of orientation which has been undermining the radical left formation for years. On migration issues, the highly publicized MP Sahra Wagenknecht has long since freed herself from the party agenda. To the point that her speech seems close to that of the far right, with which she also shares the defense of Russia. Asked to leave, she toyed with the idea of starting a new party.
“We should not pit the precarious against each other”, comments Carola Rackete who sees in the ongoing divorce an opportunity to revive Die Linke, which fell to less than 5% of the vote in the last legislative elections of 2021.
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