The Greens lost the German election and are no longer part of the government. Now, they want to reposition themselves — and to listen more closely to what the people have to say.
Germany is sweltering. Temperatures in Cologne and Hamburg hit 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) earlier this week. Radio stations have been giving advice on how to cope with the hot weather, commenting that a heat wave so early in the summer is very unusual. Climate change is to blame, they say. Its repercussions are being felt more and more keenly, even in central Europe.
Surely this is the ideal moment for the Greens to step forward in the public debate on climate protection? The fight against climate change is their core issue, after all. But the party is dealing with internal challenges. Two months after losing their position in government, they’re still trying to work out what exactly their role is now, and how best to connect with people around the country — not least on the issue of the current heatwave.
The two co-chairs of the Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Britta Haßelmann and Katharina Dröge, have put forward a strategy paper detailing how they think the Greens should proceed, now that they’re in opposition, while emphasizing that this is not a reckoning with the previous party leadership.
“We say, very confidently, that being in government was worthwhile,” says Dröge. “We made the country more climate-neutral, fairer, more progressive. Now, though, there must be a restructuring of the Greens in opposition.”
But while certain government decisions continue to stir uproar among some Greens — as when the new Education Minister Karin Prien, of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), banned civil servants from using gender-neutral language — Haßelmann’s reaction is restrained. “Who’s interested in this?” she said. “For people who are single parents, who have to juggle family and work, who may not even be able to afford one week’s holiday, it has little to do with the reality of their lives.”
Germany’s election in February marked a turning point for the Greens. The result was sobering: They gained only 11.6% of the vote, and the dream of another term in government, perhaps in coalition with the CDU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), quickly died.
After the election, the party’s figureheads — Robert Habeck, vice-chancellor and economy minister, and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock — announced they would be stepping back from front-line politics. Habeck is now just an ordinary member of parliament, while Baerbock has been elected the next president of the UN General Assembly in New York. She will take office in September, a long way from the politics of Berlin, giving up her seat in the Bundestag.
The remaining Green leadership figures say they want to bring the party closer to the people. The parliamentary party co-chairs want to reckon with the perception that a large swathe of the population see the Greens as the party that stops them doing things. As an example, they cite Habeck’s heating law, which became a PR disaster that left people with the impression that the Greens were trying to force them to install expensive heat pumps, regardless of whether or not they could afford it.
Now, the Greens want to do things differently — and to listen better to what people have to say. This could prove difficult, though. The Greens don’t have sufficient personnel, especially in the east of the country, to be able to reach people in person. Right now, the Green Party actually has more members than ever — around 180,000 — but only about 14,000 across all five states in the former Eas. And the number of active members is smaller still.
When the new German government, a coalition of CDU and SPD, decided to take on new debt of up to one trillion euros to supply the German army and build new roads, schools and train stations, the Greens approved it. They also have few problems with the staunch support the new government wants to give Ukraine in the war against Russia. In exchange for their support for the incoming government’s plans, the Greens did manage to negotiate an additional extra money for climate protection over the coming years.
Perhaps, says Dröge, there is a way to link the new approach, of listening more closely to the electorate, with the Greens’ core brand: Climate protection. “People are suffering in the heat. Older people need protection from it — from the significant health risks. Yet despite this, climate protection still doesn’t occupy the [central] role it should,” she said of the new government’s policies.
But combating global warming is not a popular topic with the electorate right now. These are difficult times for the Greens, the former party of government.
This article has been translated from German.
