The parliamentary group hopes to win Markus Söder for the abolition of the minimum age for the office of prime minister. The Greens’ top candidate Katharina Schulze is directly affected.
The Greens in the state parliament want to try to convince Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) to abolish the minimum age for the office of prime minister. “If he is now open to this long-overdue change, we will both be happy to invite him to a personal meeting next week,” said the state parliamentary group leaders Katharina Schulze and Ludwig Hartmann in a joint statement on Friday. It is unlikely that Söder will accept the offer of talks. An SZ request from the State Chancellery initially went unanswered.
Schulze is directly affected by the age hurdle. Although she is also the top candidate for the Greens for the state elections in October 2023 alongside Hartmann, she should not become prime minister because at the age of 38 she has not yet reached the minimum age of 40 stipulated in the Bavarian constitution. As early as summer 2022, the Greens in the state parliament had tried to overturn this rule with a corresponding legislative proposal – and failed primarily due to resistance from the CSU. Söder confirmed this resistance last Wednesday. At the same time, he suggested that he had unsuccessfully offered the Greens in 2018 to remove the minimum age from the constitution. “No, he didn’t,” contradicted Schulze, who accused Söder of lying.