Terry Reintke: An experienced European politician with heart and mind
Terry is a child of the Ruhr region. She has seen what it does to a region when industry moves away, the queues in front of the job centres get longer, certainties in people’s lives are lost, and the life achievements of entire generations seem to be called into question.
In the Ruhr region, Terry has also learned that change can succeed if we show solidarity and stick together. So that everyone can live in dignity. So that our society holds together.
That is why she has become politically active: To set the course for a social solidarity green transformation in Europe and to develop new perspectives for its people and economy.
Terry was overwhelmingly elected Co-Chair of the Green Group in autumn 2022, which she had joined eight years earlier as the then youngest MEP at the age of 27. And she has set her sights high.
What Terry stands for: Shaping tomorrow’s Europe today
Green Transformation and Green Industrial Policy
In Brussels and Strasbourg, Terry is fighting for the Green transformation: the European economy is on its way to climate neutrality, and the EU is the framework in which the necessary course must be set to secure our prosperity. Not only in the fight against climate change, but also to fix past mistakes that have led us into fossil fuel dependencies.
The future of Europe’s competitiveness will be determined by how well Europe leads climate-neutral modernisation. This is how we can create the jobs of the future and initiate a global turnaround in the fight against climate change. It takes targeted support and regulation to make sure we are pioneers on the global market. Green steel and Green industry with green hydrogen are the job and prosperity engines of the future.
Social justice
Terry is committed to a Europe that fairly secures the transition to a carbon-neutral economy and gives people the prospect of good jobs and a future worth living. Europe is facing major upheavals as a result of the ecological modernisation of the economy – both for people, their work and their lives, and for companies, their production processes and suppliers. Upheavals and social change always place a heavy burden on the people who experience them.
This is what Terry stands for as an experienced European social politician and convinced trade unionist: A Europe that strengthens our welfare state and workers’ rights, that creates more social balance so that our societies do not drift further apart:
Freedom and democracy
In Ukraine at the Euromaidan, at demonstrations for media freedom in Hungary or at protests against the rollback of women’s rights in Poland – European flags are flying everywhere. These people place their hope in Europe; for them, the EU is a shield against corruption and authoritarian social restructuring, against the dismantling of fundamental democratic rights and the incitement of dissent.
Terry stands for an EU that protects freedom, guarantees minority rights, strengthens democratic institutions and acts against abuse of power.