Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour were confirmed in office at the Green Party conference in Karlsruhe. Lang was re-elected with 82.3 percent, Nouripour with 79.1 percent. The delegates thus enabled Lang and Nouripour to serve another two-year term. The re-election of the two co-party leaders did not come as a surprise – it was already considered certain before the party conference began.
Lang ran unopposed in the seat reserved for women and achieved a better result than in her first election. She received 75.9 percent of the votes in January 2021. Since she was elected at a digital party conference, she had to vote again by post – in this election, Lang received 78.7 percent of the vote.
The Greens need to focus even more on social justice, says Lang
Lang comes from Baden-Württemberg and considers himself to be on the left wing of the party. She has been with the Greens since 2012 and was also head of the youth organization Green Youth. Her focus is social policy. Lang works with her co-chair Omid Nouripour without any apparent problems.
In her application speech, Lang emphasized the successes of the Greens as part of the traffic light coalition with the SPD and FDP. “I am so incredibly proud of what we have achieved in the last two years,” said Lang, citing the 49-euro ticket, securing the gas supply last winter and the abolition of paragraph 219a, which prohibited doctors from doing so had to inform about abortions.
But Lang was also self-critical. The Greens are not always able to reach people. At times when her party was in trouble, she sometimes slipped into “technocratic” behavior. In addition, from their point of view, the traffic light and the Greens themselves needed a stronger focus on social justice. What is needed is “a new promise of justice for the broad spectrum of society – from good collective wages to investments in infrastructure to a reliable welfare state.”
Nouripour reports on the dramatic consequences of his political work
Nouripour is considered a proven foreign policy expert and belongs to the Realo wing of the Greens. The 48-year-old spent his childhood in Tehran and came to Hesse with his family at the age of 13. He is a sharp critic of the Iranian leadership. At the party conference he reported on the dramatic consequences of his political work for relatives in Iran. After he spoke out clearly last year about the courageous women in Iran who are taking to the streets against the regime, he received calls from relatives “who asked me if I could keep it quieter because they were because of me “Work here has been threatened. And not everyone survived.” Nouripour said it was “extremely difficult for me to regain my composure” after this news.
On the agenda at the meeting in Karlsruhe this Friday was not only the election of the party executive committee, but also the election of the top candidate for the European elections next year. As expected, the Greens are going into the election campaign with Terry Reintke; It was voted number 1 on the European list with 95 percent. The 36-year-old is one of the two chairmen of the Green group in the European Parliament.
“Next year we will have to fight with all our might against a shift to the right in the European Parliament,” said Reintke. Parts of European conservatives wanted to work with right-wing extremists to create majorities. On the other hand, she will fight for a climate-neutral and fair EU that guarantees a fair minimum wage and provides for minimum taxation standards.
The Greens also want to decide on their European program at the party conference. In the 2019 European elections, the party achieved its best result to date at the federal level with 20.5 percent.