Following a poor result in September‘s regional elections, the leadership of the Greens, one of two junior partners in Germany‘s coalition government, resigned on Wednesday (25 September), citing the need for new faces ahead of next year‘s national elections.
The Greens were voted out of the assemblies of Brandenburg and Thuringia, and in Saxony, they received just 5.1% of the vote. Nationally, they are now polling in the single digits for the first time in seven years, according to a new Insa poll.
“Sunday’s election result in Brandenburg is testimony to the deepest crisis our party has faced in a decade,” said party leader Omid Nouripour in Berlin on Wednesday. “We have come to the conclusion: We need a fresh start.”
New faces are now needed “to lead the party out of this crisis”, said co-party leader Ricarda Lang, adding that the election of a new leadership should be a “building block for the strategic reorganisation of this party”.
Lang and Nouripour were elected co-chairs in 2022 and were reelected for two years in 2023. They continued the party‘s pragmatic turn and oversaw a visual rebrand last year that was supposed to underline the Greens‘ new identity as a moderate party of government.
The Greens‘ European coordinator, Pegah Edalatian and other members of the leadership board will step down alongside Lang and Nouripour. Edalatian organised the German input to the European Green Party manifesto for the EU elections earlier this year, among other things.
Rumours around EU specialist
Lang’s and Nouripour’s predecessors were Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. Green leaders are expected to abandon their posts, however, if they get voted into another office due to internal rules against the monopolisation of offices.
According to SPIEGEL, Franziska Brantner, Andreas Audretsch, and Felix Banaszak are rumoured to be potential next leaders. The Greens usually nominate two leaders, one of whom must be a woman. They also conventionally cover both the left and the moderate wing of the party.
Among European policy circles, Brantner is known as one of Germany’s most prolific EU specialists. She had been tipped to become Germany’s EU commissioner in case of a retreat of German Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
As a former member of the European Parliament (2009-2013), she made a name for herself as the Green group‘s coordinator on foreign policy. Before that, she worked on EU human rights policy at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) think tank.
With Habeck becoming economy minister, Brantner joined his ministry as junior minister (secretary of state).
Banaszak and Audretsch are members of the German Bundestag.
Preparing Habeck?
The new leadership has to prepare the party for next year‘s federal elections, working closely with the party‘s lead candidate. Habeck, a pragmatic, is currently in pole position for this after Baerbock declared she would not lead the campaign for a second time after 2021.
“This step shows great strength and foresight. Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour are proving what party leadership means to them: responsibility. They are paving the way for a powerful new beginning,” Habeck told dpa.
[Edited by Alice Taylor-Braçe]
Source: euractiv.com
