For many years, Franziska Giffey presented herself as a pragmatic doer and was successful with it. With the defeat in the Berlin elections, she lost control of this narrative. In the SPD, the first party friends are calling for personal consequences.
She laughs. Even on this difficult day. It’s a brief moment of ease in a tense performance. A journalist wants to know whether Franziska Giffey could imagine splitting up the office of Governing Mayor for the remainder of the electoral term. Two years SPD, two years Greens. After all, the parties are only 105 votes apart. “Well, to put it very briefly,” says Giffey, “I don’t think much of governing as a part-time job, even divided up into legislative periods.”