The magazine was established in 2012, with the objective of providing a venue for European-level debate amongst the green movement in Europe.

It has various partner organisations and publications in different European countries, including Bright Green, Krytyka Polityczna, and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, among others.

[15] The magazine publishes articles online throughout the year on its website on a variety of topics ranging from the Green New Deal and decolonial ecology to the geopolitics of climate breakdown.

[16] The magazine also publishes audio versions of selected articles in the form of a podcast titled Green Wave.

Notable authors whose work has been published in the Green European Journal include Vandana Shiva, Amitav Ghosh, Rosi Braidotti, Ulrike Guérot, Michel Bauwens, Natalie Bennett, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Olivier De Schutter, Cory Doctorow, Joschka Fischer, David Graeber, Chantal Mouffe, Kate Raworth, and Yanis Varoufakis.