{"id":326935,"date":"2025-08-08T04:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T04:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/326935\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T04:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T04:08:10","slug":"if-the-greens-in-germany-move-towards-the-centre-they-can-become-a-real-force-again-katja-hoyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/326935\/","title":{"rendered":"If the Greens in Germany move towards the centre, they can become a real force again | Katja Hoyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The German Green party, Die Gr\u00fcnen, was once the envy of its sister movements across Europe. In the spring of 2021 it was the most popular party in the country, with a predicted vote share<\/a> of close to 30%. The world\u2019s press even began to ask<\/a> whether the next chancellor would be Green. Fast-forward four years and you find a party in crisis: divided, out of power and stagnating at just above 10% in the polls after losing 33 seats in February\u2019s federal election. The party is now searching for a path back to the mainstream \u2013 not a moment too soon given the rapid erosion of Germany\u2019s political centre.<\/p>\n

One of the Greens\u2019 key problems is personnel. At their peak in 2021 they had two lead figures in Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck<\/a>, who were widely regarded as pragmatists \u2013 a prerequisite for effective government in Germany\u2019s compromise-oriented system. After the 2021 election, Baerbock became foreign minister in Olaf Scholz\u2019s SPD-Green-liberal \u201ctraffic light coalition<\/a>\u201d, and Habeck vice chancellor and minister for economic affairs and climate action.<\/p>\n

After the collapse of that government, the Greens lost a million votes and fell into fourth place in this year\u2019s elections. Key personnel are departing en masse. Habeck wants to move to Denmark<\/a>; Baerbock is now president of the United Nations General Assembly. Meanwhile the entire leadership board of the party\u2019s Green Youth wing quit the party<\/a> altogether. In theory, this should have opened an opportunity for a reset.<\/p>\n

The party elected a new leadership duo \u2013 Franziska Brantner, 45, and Felix Banaszak, 35 \u2013 and new Green Youth leaders: the climate activist Jakob Blasel and the self-proclaimed \u201cleftwing radical<\/a>\u201d Jette Nietzard. But far from being a reboot, this setup has highlighted deep internal divisions. Since the Greens emerged out of the anti-nuclear, environmental and peace movements of the 1980s and became a serious political player, there has been a rift<\/a> between the party\u2019s pragmatists, known as Realos, and its fundamentalists, or Fundis.<\/p>\n

These old ideological faultlines have reappeared with a vengeance, and follow generational lines. You could practically hear the collective sigh of relief at the top of the party when Nietzard announced<\/a> that she wouldn\u2019t run for the Green Youth leadership again this autumn. She has repeatedly alienated the centrist voter groups the Greens are trying to win back, appearing in clothing imprinted with the anti-police acronym \u201cACAB\u201d and the anti-capitalist slogan \u201cEat the rich\u201d. Last month she pondered<\/a> whether resistance to any future government coalition containing the far-right AfD should be \u201cintellectual or perhaps with weapons\u201d.<\/p>\n

Those may be positions shared by other German leftwingers, but that space on the political spectrum is already occupied by Die Linke<\/a>, which has recently made gains by taking a more stridently combative position against the right. People as far to the left as Nietzard are more likely to vote Die Linke<\/a> than Green. The two parties are now neck and neck in the polls, with 10-12% each.<\/p>\n

The new Green leadership is determined to resolve the party\u2019s split personality and find its way back to the centre, and to power. Banaszak wants to put clear blue water between his party and the radical left. He told the German press that \u201cit wasn\u2019t a secret\u201d that he and Nietzard \u201cmostly held different opinions\u201d. With her gone, the new leadership is hoping to restore a Realo-dominated party. To this end they are using the parliamentary summer recess to travel to areas of Germany where the \u201catmosphere is heated\u201d, as their campaign<\/a> put it, especially working-class strongholds in the industrial Ruhr region and the former East Germany.<\/p>\n

The pair were ridiculed for this initially, especially when Banaszak ensured he was photographed sitting on the floor<\/a> of a train, even though German politicians have unlimited use of first class. But if the trip helps bring the Green leadership closer to Germany\u2019s political realities, it could be more than just a publicity stunt. On a recent visit to Thuringia, an AfD stronghold in the former East Germany, Banaszak was told by the teenage son<\/a> of a Green mayor that \u201cpeople here think of the Greens as radical climate activists\u201d, but if they see that Green politicians can bring improvements \u2013 if \u201clife is breathed back into a village, roads are repaired\u201d \u2013 then their reputation might be restored.<\/p>\n

In the West German industrial town of Duisburg, Brantner pondered whether the Greens lost young male voters by failing to offer a positive place for them. Whenever the concept of masculinity was mentioned, she suggested, it was preceded by the word \u201ctoxic\u201d. Such self-criticism is new and important. The AfD strategy<\/a> for coming to power is to provoke a Trump-style polarisation of politics. The Greens will play into their hands if they move further to the left, abandoning the centre ground the AfD seeks to destroy.<\/p>\n

There is plenty of room for a mainstream Green party<\/a> in Germany\u2019s political landscape. They could become the country\u2019s foremost centre-left force if they play their cards right, strengthening moderate politics overall. Part of their potential is that they can work with conservatives. The southern state of Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg has been led by the Green Winfried Kretschmann since 2011, and he is popular even with conservative voters, running a coalition with the centre-right CDU \u2013 a model that could also work on the federal level.<\/p>\n

Like it or not, there is a conservative majority in German society looking for an expression of its views on the political stage. The CDU has vowed never to work with the AfD, but this binds them to an increasingly unpopular Social Democratic Party (SPD). Adding a CDU-Green coalition to the range of options would strengthen the centre, and in doing so strengthen a democracy that is under attack. Not to mention that it would also restore environmental concerns to a political culture that appears to have sidelined them.<\/p>\n

Whether the new Green leaders can take a deeply divided party with them on their path to pragmatic progressivism remains to be seen. But try they must \u2013 not just for the sake of their own party, but for the sake of German democracy.<\/p>\n