Rebecca Harms (born 7 December 1956) is a German politician who served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2004 until 2019. She is a member of the Alliance '90/The Greens, part of the European Green Party. From 2010 until 2016 she served as president of The Greens–European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament. Early life and education Harms was born into a traditional working-class household and grew up in a village near Uelzen in Lower Saxony. She finished school with the Abitur in 1975 and began her career with an apprenticeship in plant nursery and landscape gardening. During her apprenticeship years, she moved with like-minded friends to an abandoned farm in the nearby district of Lüchow-Dannenberg and joined a local organic farmers’ co-operative. Political career During the following years, Harms became active in the anti-nuclear movement and began to study at university. In 1984 employed her as an advisor after being elected to the European Parliament. She returned to her home in 1988 to work as a production manager at the Wendland Film Co-operative, producing, among other films, documentaries about the Gorleben protest movement. From 1994 to 2004, Harms was a member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony. From 1998 she served as chairwoman of her party on the state level. She has since been a member of the Parteirat, the federal leadership body of Germany's Green Party. Member of the European Parliament, 2004–2019 In 2004, Harms was the top candidate of the Alliance 90/The Greens for the Elections to the European Parliament and in 2009 she was elected again for parliament. Ahead of the 2014 elections, she lost out against fellow German MEP Ska Keller to lead the European Greens’ campaign alongside José Bové; however, she eventually led the German Green Party in the election campaign. In her first term in parliament, Harms was a member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy. Between 2007 and 2009, she served as Vice Chairwoman of the Temporary Committee on Climate Change; she was part of the European Parliament's delegations to the 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali and the 2008 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznań. Harms led the Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament from 2009, at first alongside Daniel Cohn-Bendit (2009–14) and later Philippe Lamberts (2014-2016). In addition, she was a member of the Committee of Inquiry into Emission Measurements in