Party leaders resign after shocking loss in German election

Admin I Thursday, September 26, 2024

 

BERLIN – The German Green Party’s co-leaders, Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour, announced on Wednesday that the entire party executive is resigning in November following a string of poor results in regional elections.

“We need a fresh start,” Nouripour said at a press conference in Berlin on Wednesday. A new executive committee is to be elected at the Greens’ national party conference in mid-November.

At the national level, the Greens are currently the second-largest party in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government, which has been beset by bitter infighting and has slumped badly in opinion polls.

Among the most recent and bitter disappointments for the Greens was Sunday’s election in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, when the party lost all its seats in the state parliament after falling short of the 5% threshold needed to take seats in German elections.

“New faces are needed to lead the party out of this crisis,” said Lang. “Now is the time to take responsibility and we are taking on this responsibility by making a fresh start possible.”

The Greens are part of the incumbent coalition government in Brandenburg but got just 4.1% on Sunday, a steep decline from the 10.7% the party received in the previous state election in 2019.

Elections on September 1 also saw the Greens lose ground in the German states of Thuringia and Saxony. The Greens will not hold any seats in Thuringia after the election, and barely cleared the 5% threshold in Saxony.

European Parliament elections held in June also saw the Greens perform poorly with German voters.

The party has been the focus of attacks from conservative and right-wing politicians in Germany, who have alleged that Green policies on climate change and particularly around the energy transition have harmed Germany’s economy and industry.

Lang and Nouripour were elected co-chairs at the end of January 2022 and are considered relatively popular among party members.

Many within the Green Party give them credit for the fact that there has not been the kind of intense internal rivalries and clashes over policy that have characterized the party in the past.