German Green leaders resign after poll defeats

The joint leaders of Germany's Green Party, which is a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition government, are to step down following disappointing recent local election results, which they say shows the party needs a reset.

Although Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour do not hold positions in the government, where the senior Greens are Minister for the Economy Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock — the previous joint party leaders — their announcement will be a blow to the coalition.

Its opinion poll ratings are at a record low, and Scholz personally has the lowest popularity rating ever seen for a chancellor.

Germany's Green Party was a trailblazer for others across Europe, but after years of growth, its support has tailed off, with the result of the recent local election in Brandenburg state being the latest setback.

It claimed just 4.1 percent of the votes, below the 5 percent threshold needed to be included in the state parliament. At the same time, the populist far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, and fledgling populist leftists, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, saw their support continue to grow.

"It is time to lay our beloved party's fate in others' hands," said Nouripour, who, along with Lang, will remain in his position until the party's conference in November. Brandenburg, he added, was "evidence of our party's deepest crisis for a decade" and "a new beginning is needed".

In the run-up to the 2021 elections for Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, public support over issues such as climate change pushed Green Party support to new heights.

But since entering government it has found itself facing major challenges on issues such as the energy crisis, which have led to critics accusing it of trying to force its beliefs on an unwilling public through policies such as one promoting alternative domestic heating systems.

Against this background, and ahead of the 2025 Bundestag election, Lang said change was needed urgently.

"We will decide how Germany will develop in the future and to some degree we will also decide what this country really wants to be: a country where we hold our course on climate neutrality and so protect prosperity and cohesion for today and tomorrow, or a country in which those who want only to go backward on all of these fronts will succeed."