Green politician Fester: For the youth in the Bundestag

Since the elections it has been clear that the Bundestag will be more female, younger and more diverse in the future. The youngest new MP is 23-year-old Emilia Fester from the Greens. Their goal: to strengthen the rights of young people.

Emilia Fester gets a lot of calls these days. At the age of 23 she achieved more than many others up to retirement. She was an assistant director at the theater and at the Green Youth in Hamburg, where she helped negotiate the coalition agreement between the SPD and the Greens. She is now the youngest member of the Bundestag.

She didn’t know that she was really there until the morning after the election. “I woke up at 7:30 am and had 1,500 messages on my cell phone from people congratulating me, inquiries from the press,” she says. “I got on the train with this feeling that a lot of people are thinking of me, that my family is completely freaked out, that it worked.”

Greens with most MPs under 30

In Berlin she has a lot to do right away. Check in to parliament, learn ways, find people for your own office, look for an apartment. Emilia Fester wants to found a flat share, she already knows that, with two young Greens from Bavaria. “The Greens are a party for the future, they are committed to this and that is why they not only put me on the lists, but many young people.”

22 Greens in the new Bundestag are younger than 30 years – there are so many young people in no other parliamentary group. Many celebrate it. But: young, left-wing, female – Fester has to endure a lot in social networks. For example, she is accused of lacking professional experience. “A wonderful comment was also: ‘At least it looks good. What else you don’t have to be able to do with the Greens #Women’s Quota’.” Defamatory shit “is what the festival calls.

Everyone should be represented in the Bundestag, she says, including young people, of course. She wants to stand up for their rights over the next four years. For more climate protection and for the voting age to be lowered. “The last few years have shown how political young people are,” says Fester. “I think it is undemocratic that she cannot have a say in her own future. We have to deal with that.”

Voting at the age of 16 – quite realistic if the Greens and FDP ultimately rule with the Social Democrats. All three parties want to lower the voting age. But what if it ultimately turns out to be a Jamaica coalition? Emilia Fester rolls her eyes. “I don’t see how we as the green parliamentary group can now make a CDU person who has lost so much chancellor.” In addition, a clear majority of the population wanted Olaf Scholz as Chancellor. “That is why I am assuming that we will send Laschet and the CDU into the opposition. They also desperately need it.” Clear announcements from the youngest member of the Bundestag – soon also in the plenary.