Thomas Waitz

Thomas Waitz (born 16 May 1973) is an Austrian ecological farmer, forester, and politician for the Greens Party. He has served as a board member for the European Green Party (EGP) since March 2017 and has been a member of the European Parliament since November 2017, after Ulrike Lunacek's resignation. After the 2019 European Parliament election, he lost his mandate until Brexit took place on 31 January 2020 and he received a new mandate for Austria. He has been the co-chair of the European Green Party together with Evelyne Huytebroeck since 10 November 2019. On 5th June 2022 he was reelected to the EGP Co-Chair together with the french senator Mélanie Vogel Early life Waitz was born in Vienna, Austria. After finishing school and traveling the world, he started a farm with his wife in the Leibnitz district in the very south of Styria in 1994. The primary sector of their farm is the mixed forest—worked in a traditional way, a so called planter forest —based on the theory of near-natural forest management. The second focus of their farm is ecological beekeeping; it has about 70 colonies of the Carniolan honey bee. The third sector on the farm is the animal husbandry: Carniolan stone sheep and Border Collies. The Border Collies are trained as herding dogs. Waitz is also involved in a tiny lumber mill in Slovenia. Political career