Can Robert Habeck save Germany's Green Party?

Germany's Greens have been at the receiving end of ever more acrimonious attacks by their political opponents, while their leading politicians are facing a fierce headwind on social media. At a time when the far right and populists are celebrating a string of election successes on a platform of tougher immigration policies, the environmentalists are struggling to push their key issues: The energy transition and climate protection.

Germany's Green Party has a long history of ups and downs: In 1990, the year of German reunification, when the population was chiefly concerned with the two halves of the country coming together peacefully, the Greens wanted to focus on environmental protection. This resulted in a poor result at the ballot box in the general election of that year, and the party almost lost representation in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, altogether.

Then, in 1999, when the Greens were in government alongside the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), they followed their party's Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and approved Germany's participation in the NATO mission in Kosovo — a break with the party's pacifist traditions. Tens of thousands of members left the Greens at the time.

Four major election defeats this year

The Greens have suffered a series of disappointing election results this year. First, in the European election in June, they won only 11.9%, down from the 20.5% they garnered in 2019 — when they were still in opposition in Berlin.

This was followed in September by three crushing results in elections in the eastern states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg: The party is now only represented in the state parliament in Saxony — everywhere else they failed to pass the necessary 5% threshold.

As a result, party leaders Omid Nouripour and Ricarda Lang decided to resign last week. The outgoing leaders said that the Greens' policies of climate protection and a moderate reform of migration policy no longer resonated with voters, before adding that many voters now seem to see the Greens as oblivious to voters' real concerns.

Two new leaders will be elected at the upcoming party conference in mid-November. One candidate is Franziska Brantner, state secretary in the Federal Economy Ministry. The other is Bundestag lawmaker Felix Banaszak, who until 2022 led the Greens in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where they are now in government with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Brantner is a close confidante of Economy Minister and Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck and, like him, she is thought to have little patience for the sensitivities of party members who relish debates on fundamental policy principles.

At a party conference just over a year ago, she told DW she was in favor of taking out loans for large-scale investment into the ailing economy, and for loosening the "debt brake" enshrined in the constitution. Germany's 16 states are obliged to balance their books, and the federal government is permitted net borrowing amounting to a maximum of 0.35% of economic output, the GDP.

Felix Banaszak, meanwhile, is passionate in his support for the rearmament of the Bundeswehr and for arms deliveries to Ukraine, both positions he shares with Habeck. When DW asked whether young Greens like him could still call themselves pacifists, like their party founders once were, he replied: "In the classic pacifist sense of the 1980s: No. If you want to live in peace, you first need to achieve peace. If you want to achieve peace, you first need military strength. So it's not about 'creating peace without weapons,' but our goal remains to establish a more peaceful world."

Political pundits wonder whether, at a time of poor poll ratings and the coalition's ongoing dispute over pensions, the budget, and migration, it makes sense to rely on Habeck to spearhead the party's campaign in next year's federal election, even though he is one of the main players in developments that plunged the party into crisis.

Habeck's attempt to replace gas and oil heating systems in German houses by encouraging the installation of more sustainable heat pumps turned into a PR disaster: A draft law on the matter was made public before it was finished, drawing a massive backlash. The law did come into force eventually, but it had been watered down considerably. Since this defeat, Habeck's formerly sky-high popularity ratings have continued to fall.

However, Habeck, a former children's book author, has often proven that he is capable of learning. Born in 1969 in Lübeck, Habeck studied philosophy, German literature, and philology before earning a doctorate in 2000. He joined the Green Party in 2002. He is a father of four in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, where he served as environment minister from 2012 to 2018. During that time, he built a reputation as an easygoing politician who worked equally well with the center-left SPD and the center-right CDU.

Habeck is considered pragmatic enough to be open to an alliance with the conservatives of the CDU and CSU on a federal level. It seems unclear whether the party will tailor its election campaign entirely to the current vice-chancellor. However, it is likely that the party members will not want to stand in the way of one of their best-known figures in his bid for the chancellorship after Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced she would not renew her candidacy. The Greens are currently polling at around 11% nationwide and it is extremely unlikely that the current government of SPD, Greens and neoliberalFree Democrats (FDP) will be returned to office next year.

This article was originally written in German.

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