party congress
Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour elected as the new top duo of the Greens
The new and the old party leadership: Annalena Baerbockk hands over her office to Omid Nouripour.
© Kay Nietfeld / DPA
The Green dual leadership from Baerbock and Habeck hands over the baton to their successors. The social politician Lang and the foreign politician Nouripour are now to lead the party. However, they are not officially in office yet.
After joining the traffic light federal government, the Greens elected two new chairmen. The left-wing social politician Ricarda Lang, 28, and the Realo foreign politician Omid Nouripour, 46, were chosen as the new leadership duo at the online party conference. According to the party, Lang received 75.93 percent of the votes, Nouripour got 82.58 percent. The digital votes now have to be formally confirmed by postal vote, which should happen by February 14th. Only then are the two newcomers formally in office.
The two previous party leaders, Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, are Foreign Ministers and Ministers for Economics and Climate Protection in the new federal government with the SPD and FDP. According to the Greens’ statutes, they could not remain party leaders. They had led the Greens in tandem for four years.
No female opponent for Ricarda Lang
Lang ran unopposed. According to the statutes, the leadership duo of the Greens must include at least one woman. This time there were no other candidates for the post reserved for a woman.
In addition to Nouripour, Mathias Ilka from Hesse also applied for the second post, but only received 17 votes. He sharply criticized the coalition agreement of the traffic light government. Too much space was left to the FDP on economic and social issues. Torsten Kirschke from Berlin spontaneously registered his candidacy and explained that he wanted to take a stand against discrimination against disabled people. He got 60 votes.
The best result so far in a chairperson election since the merger of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in 1993 was Baerbock’s re-election in November 2019 with 97.1 percent.
Due to a corona infection, Lang was unable to speak on the stage in the Berlin Velodrom, where a manageable group of top Greens was gathered. The several hundred delegates were connected online.
Practical improvements are more important than unrealistic ideals
In her candidacy speech for the co-chair of the party, Lang emphasized that practical improvements were more important to her than unrealistic ideals. Government participation is a huge opportunity for the Greens, even if compromises are necessary. “Government isn’t a punishment, it’s a huge opportunity,” she said. The combination of climate protection and social justice must be made the basis of Green policy. “We now have to prove that it’s possible.” Lang is attributed to the left wing of the party.
So far, Lang has been deputy leader and women’s policy spokeswoman for the Greens and has therefore been part of the federal executive board since 2019. She was also involved in that controversial decision in winter 2020, with which the board approved corona bonuses of 1,500 euros for all employees of the federal office – and thus also for themselves. The Berlin public prosecutor’s office is investigating the board on initial suspicion of infidelity.
Nouripour is a prominent foreign politician and has been a member of the Bundestag from Frankfurt am Main since 2006. He was born in Iran and came to Germany with his family at the age of 13.
In his application speech, he said his goal was to move the party forward so that it could “play the K question again”. The 46-year-old member of the Bundestag assigns himself to the Realo wing. He praised young party colleagues who did not let the hatred directed at them by political opponents get them down. “We are the indomitable!” Nouripour called out to the delegates. With his candidacy he wants to motivate people with a migration background to get involved in politics.