The Green Party conference confirmed the two chairmen Lang and Nouripour in office. Lang was re-elected with 82.3 percent of the vote – there was no opposing candidate. Nouripour beat a competitor with 79.1 percent.
The Greens are sticking to their dual leadership: Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour were re-elected as party leaders at the party conference in Karlsruhe. The delegates thereby enabled them to serve another two-year term. Lang ran unopposed in the seat reserved for women and won 82.3 percent of the vote. Nouripour, who had a competitor, received 79.1 percent. Opposing candidate Philipp Schmagold accounted for twelve percent.
Lang achieved a better result than her first election. She received a total of 75.93 percent of the votes in January 2022. Since she was elected at a digital party conference at the time, she had to vote again by post – in this election she received 78.73 percent of the vote.
Nouripour’s result this time was slightly worse than in his first election at the beginning of 2022. At that time, he achieved 82.6 percent against two competitors at an online party conference. The result later improved to 91.65 percent when the postal vote was confirmed.
“The two harder years are still to come”
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, who mentioned, among other things, securing the gas supply last winter, the 49-euro ticket and the abolition of paragraph 219a. 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.
Nouripour warned his party that the most difficult times in the traffic light coalition were still ahead. “Those were two trying years, but those were the two easy years,” he said. “The two harder ones are coming now, we know that.” In response to a question about the mood in the traffic light coalition, he admitted: “We have too much argument.” That has to be less. He encouraged his party. “The most important thing is what arrives in the country and not how we feel about it.”
The 48-year-old, who grew up in Tehran and came to Germany with his family at the age of 13, also reported on the consequences of his political work for relatives in Iran. After he made clear statements about the courageous women in Iran last year, he received calls from relatives “who asked me if I could tone it down because they had been threatened because of my work here.” He added: “And not everyone survived.” Mass protests against the government began in Iran in September 2022.
Focus on social and foreign policy
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. Nouripour is considered a realo and is a long-time member of the Bundestag from Frankfurt with a focus on foreign policy.
As federal chairmen of their party, the two have so far worked together without any apparent problems. They are continuing the course of their predecessors Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock and are trying to make the Greens more electable to more people beyond the core clientele – which, according to surveys, has recently been less successful.
Big topic budget crisis
After the election of the chairwoman, the selection of candidates for the European elections begins at the party conference; a total of 40 places on the list are to be filled. The top candidate should be Terry Reintke, who has been an MEP since 2014. The Greens are currently represented in the EU Parliament by 21 members.
The first day of the party conference was dominated by the budget crisis following the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling, as a result of which the traffic light coalition is missing 60 billion euros, particularly for the climate-friendly restructuring of the economy. Federal Minister of Economics and Vice Chancellor Habeck said in his speech: “We will find solutions and continue to fight and win.”