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ELECTION

Germany’s Greens to put forward first chancellor candidate

Germany's opposition Greens party, currently surging in the polls, said Wednesday it would name its first chancellor candidate this month ahead of September's general election to replace Angela Merkel.

Published: 7 April 2021 11:37 CEST
Germany's Greens to put forward first chancellor candidate
Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck in March 2021. Photo: DPA

The centre-left ecologist party said its leadership would tap one of its co-presidents, Annalena Baerbock or Robert Habeck, on April 19th, with final approval expected at a party congress in June.

“We have a strong duo at the top with Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck for the general election 2021,” the Greens’ executive director Michael Kellner tweeted.

“And on April 19th we’ll present which of the two will take on the chancellor candidacy. #AllesistDrin (Anything’s Possible).”

While both Baerbock, 40, and Habeck, 51, have said they want to lead their party into the election, they have long stated they want to take the decision by consensus.

A poll by the Forsa institute Wednesday put Baerbock slightly ahead of Habeck in voter preference.

Who will be the conservative candidate?

The Greens’ move throws down the gauntlet to Merkel’s ruling CDU/CSU conservatives, who have said they would name their top candidate between Easter last weekend and Pentecost on May 23rd.

The battle is between CDU chief Armin Laschet, who has repeatedly sparred with Merkel over coronavirus shutdown measures, and the far more popular CSU head Markus Soeder, who as Bavarian state premier has largely toed the chancellor’s line in the pandemic.

READ ALSO: Germany after Merkel – does the new CDU leader have what it takes to be future chancellor?

The CDU/CSU, which has played a dominant role in German post-war politics for decades, is polling at around 27 percent, with the Greens hot on their heels at about 23 percent.

The conservatives have suffered a dramatic reversal of fortune in the wake of the raging third wave of the virus outbreak, a sluggish vaccine rollout and a rash of corruption allegations against several MPs.

The numbers suggest the most likely election outcome would be a first-ever federal government made up of the conservatives and the Greens when Merkel retires after 16 years at the helm of Europe’s top economy.

But analysts haven’t ruled out a Greens victory.

If it shapes up to be a race of Laschet versus Baerbock, “the probability that the Greens may win and lead the next German government may rise from 25 percent to at least 30 percent and possibly to 35 percent, in our view,”

Berenberg Bank’s chief economist Holger Schmieding said. The Greens served as junior partners in a Social Democrat-led German government 1998-2005 and have occasionally linked up with the CDU at the state level.

The Social Democrats, trailing badly at about 15 percent, have named Finance Minister Olaf Scholz as their candidate for chancellor.

READ MORE: Life after Merkel: Is Germany ready to think about what’s next?

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POLITICS

Scholz says attacks on deputies ‘threaten’ democracy

Leading politicians on Saturday condemned an attack on a European deputy with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party, after investigators said a political motive was suspected.

Published: 5 May 2024 08:34 CEST
Scholz says attacks on deputies 'threaten' democracy

Scholz denounced the attack as a “threat” to democracy and the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also sounded the alarm.

Police said four unknown attackers beat up Matthias Ecke, an MEP for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), as he put up EU election posters in the eastern city of Dresden on Friday night.

Ecke, 41, was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said. Police confirmed he needed hospital treatment.

“Democracy is threatened by this kind of act,” Scholz told a congress of European socialist parties in Berlin, saying such attacks result from “discourse, the atmosphere created from pitting people against each other”.

“We must never accept such acts of violence… we must oppose it together.”

Borrell, posting on X, formerly Twitter, also condemned the attack.

“We’re witnessing unacceptable episodes of harassment against political representatives and growing far-right extremism that reminds us of dark times of the past,” he wrote.

“It cannot be tolerated nor underestimated. We must all defend democracy.”

The investigation is being led by the state protection services, highlighting the political link suspected by police.

“If an attack with a political motive… is confirmed just a few weeks from the European elections, this serious act of violence would also be a serious act against democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

This would be “a new dimension of anti-democratic violence”, she added.

Series of attacks

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s EU election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police added that a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had earlier been “punched” and “kicked” in the same Dresden street. The same attackers were suspected.

Faeser said “extremists and populists are stirring up a climate of increasing violence”.

The SPD highlighted the role of the far-right “AfD party and other right-wing extremists” in increased tensions.

“Their supporters are now completely uninhibited and clearly view us democrats as game,” said Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, regional SPD leaders.

Armin Schuster, interior minister in Saxony, where an important regional vote is due to be held in September, said 112 acts of political violence linked to the elections have been recorded there since the beginning of the year.

Of that number, 30 were directed against people holding political office of one kind or another.

“What is really worrying is the intensity with which these attacks are currently increasing,” he said on Saturday.

On Thursday two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and one was hit in the face, police said.

Last Saturday, dozens of demonstrators surrounded parliament deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt, also a Greens lawmaker, in her car in eastern Germany. Police reinforcements had to clear a route for her to get away.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

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