We can! (Croatia)

The party was officially founded on 10 February 2019 [5], prior to the elections for the European Parliament held that year, with primary areas of interest being education, better health policies, social and gender equality, support for migrants [6], renewable sources of energy, and sustainable agriculture.

The founding assembly defined that the party does not have an official president, but instead has two coordinators – from among the membership Sandra Benčić and Teodor Celakoski were elected [5] [2] – who along with another five members of the party make up its Party Board.[2] Other prominent members of the Initiative committee at the time, most of whom remain active, included Danijela Dolenec, Damir Bakić, Iskra Mandarić, Đuro Capor, Urša Raukar, Vilim Matula, Dario Juričan, Mima Simić, Ivo Špigel, Tomislav_Tomašević and others.[7]

The parties We can!, New Left (Nova ljevica in Croatian), and Sustainable Development of Croatia (Održivi razvoj Hrvatske, or ORaH in Croatian) formed a coalition on 28 March 2019 for the 2019 European Parliament election[8], where they expected to win one seat. [9] The single seat would be occupied by all three parties on the rotational principle, and the coalition list for the elections had an equal number of candidates from all three parties, i.e. four from each party as Croatia was assigned twelve representatives in the European Parliament. The goal of the coalition is to offer policies that would transform Europe into a sustainable, just, and green community, while rejecting the neoliberal policies that generate ever greater inequality among EU citizens and Member States, even more noticeable in the EU’s peripheral countries, such as Croatia and Greece.

We can! also noted that they support the Green New Deal authored by the DiEM25 movement, which represents an ambitious plan to invest over €500 billion annually into the development of post-fossil economies in Europe, mostly into renewables, green industries, and sustainable transport.[9] The funds required for the plan would be acquired by issuing joint bonds by the European Central Bank (ECB). Tomislav Tomašević also stated that according to polls almost 60% of Croatian citizens think that Croatia is not doing enough to fight climate change, while 80% think that the Croatian economy should be pivoted to the realm of green economy.[10] Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister and one of the leaders of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), extended his support to We can! to Croatian voters prior to the election, stating that they support the Green New Deal.[9] [11]

The We can! coalition received 19,313 votes in elections for the EU Parliament, which is 1.79% of total votes.[12][13]