German Greens Leadership Steps Down After Election Debacles
(Bloomberg) -- Germany’s Greens are seeking a fresh start after a populist surge saw voters in three eastern states reject their policies aimed at cleaning up the economy.
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Co-leaders Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour on Wednesday announced they’re stepping down, taking responsibility for electoral setbacks that ejected the Greens from the legislatures in the states of Brandenburg and Thuringia. The party barely scraped past the 5% threshold needed to secure parliamentary seats in Saxony.
The outcome in Brandenburg, where support for the Greens plunged to just 4.1% from almost 11% in 2019, “is a testimony of the deepest crisis our party has faced in a decade,” Lang, 30, said in a post on X. “It’s not the time to cling on, but to take responsibility and make a new start possible.”
Lang and Nouripour took charge in February 2022 in keeping with the Greens’ tradition of shared leadership. The pair will request that members choose new leaders at the party’s next congress in November, said Nouripour, 49, who moved to Germany at the age of 13 from Tehran.
The Greens, who govern nationwide in a coalition with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and the business-friendly Free Democrats, have become one of the biggest losers from the rise of populist parties in Germany.
Nationwide support has slumped to 11% of the vote, according to the latest survey by Forsa for broadcasters RTL and N-TV. That compares with almost 15% in the 2021 election. All three coalition parties have lost support with just 12 months to go until the next national ballot.
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