analysis
With the number of refugees, the pressure on the Greens to once again adopt basic attitudes is increasing. Vice Chancellor Habeck promotes “morally difficult decisions.” Asylum policy could become an ordeal.
You can practically see Britta Haßelmann weighing her words in various interviews these days. She prefers to dance around describing visible conflicts. If you ask the Green co-leader of the parliamentary group, the Greens are currently making migration policy in an “area of tension between humanity and responsibility”. According to Duden, a tension field is “an area with opposing forces that interact with each other and in this way create a state that appears to be charged with tension.” You could also say: There is just enough tension among the Greens for sparks to fly.
A refugee policy that is primarily oriented towards humanity is part of the essentially non-negotiable core DNA of the Greens. On the other hand, there is the responsibility as part of a federal government that urgently needs quick and visible successes in dealing with increasing numbers of refugees, driven by attacks from the opposition and an ever-deteriorating situation in the municipalities. The party is struggling at all levels.
Pressure in the party and government
After the last federal election, an increasing number of young Greens joined the parliamentary group, whose political socialization is closely linked to their experiences in refugee work. The MP Julian Pahlke from Lower Saxony, for example, worked as a sea rescuer before entering the Bundestag. A lifebuoy is still pictured next to his name on his parliamentary homepage.
It will be difficult for Greens like Pahlke to accept that his party, in government responsibility, now agrees to a policy that, from their point of view, is inhumane. In addition, instead of building bridges, the traffic light partner FDP is putting additional obstacles in the already rocky green path with statements like that of Secretary General Bijan Djir-Sarai that the Greens are “a security risk for the country” on this issue. This makes complicated decisions on migration policy even more difficult for the party.
The Chancellor sets the direction
There is, for example, the European asylum reform, which, among other things, is intended to make it possible to hold asylum seekers from countries with low recognition rates longer in prison-like conditions at the EU’s external borders in order to then send them back to their home countries. The Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock agreed to this in June, and large parts of the Green base were horrified. After all, Baerbock had tried to prevent the stricter rules of the EU crisis regulation on migration as part of the asylum reform and thereby also sent a signal to the left wing of her party: Don’t worry, we’re not giving up every core green position – that was the message.
But that only worked until the Chancellor set the direction this week and once again cleared a green position. Since then, there have been somewhat grumpy reports from the party that negotiations will continue, not least in the European Parliament. It is doubtful that much of the green core position will ultimately remain.
“Old rifts between leftists and realists”
“The topic is extremely polarizing. In the Greens, old rifts between the left and the realists are emerging again,” says political scientist Julia Reuschenbach. This also has something to do with the fact that the Greens continue to fill leadership positions on a strictly equal basis from these two camps. This applies both to the duos at the top of the party and parliamentary group, as well as to the ministerial offices. This makes representation within the party possible for both wings. “At the same time, from the outside you can have the impression that positions have not been sufficiently discussed and agreed upon and that the conflicts within the party become visible,” says political scientist Reuschenbach.
This is exactly what the Greens’ so-called round of six is supposed to prevent. It consists of the two powerful cabinet members Baerbock and Habeck, the party leaders Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour and the parliamentary group leaders Britta Haßelmann and Katharina Dröge. Here we get together at least once a week to find common positions. How poorly this often works was seen in the European asylum reform. Baerbock agreed in Brussels, the Realos Habeck, Nouripour and Haßelmann supported her, while the left-wing members of the Round of Six, Lang and Dröge, publicly opposed it. Once again the question remained: Who is actually setting the direction here?
Fill cracks superficially
When the party was still formally led by Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, many Greens thought they had largely overcome the wing fights. The last real test between Fundis and Realos was over twenty years ago: in 1999, the then Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer swore his party in Bielefeld against a German military operation in Kosovo, the first since the Second World War. The wing dispute in the previously strictly pacifist party escalated.
Can something similar threaten if the Greens now have to support a significantly more restrictive refugee policy? At least to that extent it is rather unlikely. Despite all the tensions between the wings, the Greens learned something new in their second attempt at government responsibility. Communication could be a way out to reinterpret difficult decisions and thus repair the cracks, at least superficially.
Political scientist Reuschenbach believes that both groups continue to “have a positive view of migration and are now increasingly looking more at the problems, but also at the possible opportunities that primarily come with legal migration.” Whether this works will become clear at the federal party conference in November in Karlsruhe. But it probably won’t work there without sparks flying.