The Greens have endured three disastrous state elections in eastern Germany this month. Most recently, on Sunday in Brandenburg, they missed the 5% hurdle required to guarantee representation in parliament.
“Sunday’s election result in Brandenburg is evidence of the most serious crisis in our party in a decade,” Nouripour said. The same was true in Thuringia earlier this month, and in Saxony, the party barely scraped over the 5% hurdle.
Nationwide it’s also struggling in the polls, as all three members of the federal coalition government.
Lang told reporters in Berlin that “new faces” were needed now “to lead the party out of this crisis.” She said that new leadership should serve as a “building block for the reorganization of this party.”
“Now is not the time to cling to our posts,” Lang said. “Now is the time to take responsibility, we are taking this responsibility by enabling a new start.”
Lang said the current leadership, including their deputies and other officials, would remain in place until the party conference in November when replacements would be chosen.
In Germany’s political system, party leaders or chairpersons at the federal level are not necessarily also the party candidates for chancellor.
This is also the case for the Greens. Currently, Economy Minister Robert Habeck is considered most likely to stand as the party’s chancellor candidate in next year’s federal elections, given that Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has said she does not want the position for a second consecutive election.
“Difficult months lie behind us, the Greens were suffering major headwinds,” he said, adding it was certain that federal politics had played its part in the poor performances out east. “We all bear responsibility here, myself included. And I also wish to face it.”
Habeck said that he wanted there to be an “open debate” and a “secret vote” at the party conference in November on a potential chancellor candidate. He did not explicitly say he also wished to stand for the post.
In the space of roughly five years, the Greens have gone from an outside shot at being the party to field Germany’s chancellor to a group barely polling above 10% support nationwide.
The party secured 14.8% of the vote at the last federal elections in 2021, and became the second-largest party in the current national coalition, under the Social Democrats (SPD).
Source: DW News
