Leadership of German coalition party resigns

The Greens have quit en masse after a defeat in local elections, sparking “the biggest crisis in decades” within the faction

The leadership of Germany’s Green party has announced its resignation after suffering a crushing defeat in local elections in the eastern states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg earlier this month.

Ricarda Lang, one of the Greens’ two leaders, announced on Wednesday that “new faces are needed to lead the party out of this crisis.” Her co-chair Omid Nouripour agreed, saying: “we have come to the conclusion that we need a new start.”

“The results of Sunday’s elections in Brandenburg are proof of our party’s deepest crisis in a decade,” Nouripour added.

“The goal now is not to stick to a chair, the goal now is to take responsibility, and we take responsibility by making a new start possible,” Lang said, noting that the party’s current executive board will remain in place until November, when a vote is held at the party congress.

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In a key election in the state of Brandenburg on Sunday, the Greens garnered just 4% of the vote, failing to meet the 5% threshold to gain parliamentary seats. The result marked an almost seven-point drop from the last election in the state, held five years ago. Earlier this year, the party also suffered drastic losses in the European Parliament election, and in September failed to secure any seats in the state parliament of Thuringia. In Saxony, the faction barely managed to return to the state legislature, with just 5.1% of the vote.

In nationwide opinion polls, support for the Greens has dropped to 10% nationally – five points below their results in the last federal election, in 2021. Voters appear to have distanced themselves from the movement’s core message of fighting climate change, and have instead focused on issues like immigration and security, according to surveys.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose Social Democratic Party (SDP) is part of the so-called ‘traffic light coalition’, which includes the Greens, has said that the personnel change at the top of the Green party is not expected to have any impact on the work of the coalition government.