Who am I and if so, how green? Want at their party conference the unsettled Greens are also looking for answers to this question. Habeck would like more legroom – the party would rather put ankle bracelets on him. Is that going well?
Robert Habeck has moved his ministerial office to Karlsruhe from today until Sunday. Apparently the Green Vice Chancellor fears that he will otherwise miss something, possibly the wrath of his party. His followers will meet for four days for what is probably the longest and certainly the largest Green party conference of all time.
Four days that are officially used to nominate the candidates for the European elections next June, to adopt the appropriate election program, to discuss the usual 1,400 amendments and, oh yes, to re-elect their party leadership. But these are just the official occasions for this party conference. The real reason, no, the deeper meaning of the meeting is: self-assurance.
One could also say that Robert Habeck and his party friends have four days of self-preoccupation ahead of them, and if things go badly, self-destruction. Appropriately at the location of hers Founding party conference In 1980, the Greens were actually trying to rediscover themselves. Because the Greens of 2023 are tormented by many questions and doubts.
So many questions, so many doubts
Who are we and why suddenly no one loves us anymore?
Why are we so hated in some places that ordinary party members no longer dare to go out on the streets to advertise for the party (which is no longer an exclusive problem in the East)?
Why does the FDP call us a “security risk?” does the CDU declare us “main opponent“?
Why don’t we just fly in Berlin from the Senate, where they wanted to implement the pure green doctrine (keyword car-free city center), but also in Hesse from the state government, although no Green was anywhere as supple as Tarek Al-Wazir between Main and Rhine?
And why the hell does everyone in this country groan as soon as someone even mentions the word “climate protection”?
Wasn’t it all completely different, more beautiful? Which brings us back to Robert Habeck. In their best times – some say they were those in which he was together with Annalena Baerbock took the party into poll heaven – the Greens exuded something attractively likeable. They wanted to be an alliance party, which roughly meant: Anyone looking for the future at least in the same direction was invited to come along. The Greens were the omnibus of political parties, but today they remind many of them more of a demolition excavator. With electric drive, of course.
For that little bit of climate protection? That bit of energy transition?
Of course, a party that promotes more climate protection is more likeable therefore than a minister who prescribes expensive heating systems for people. But that’s just the outside view. The internal perspective is not much better. The Greens supported everything for a long time, the brutal pragmatism after the Russian attack on Ukraine, the energy deals and LNG terminals. The arming of the Bundeswehr and the supply of weapons to Ukraine.
But more and more party members are wondering whether it was worth it. And what they actually got in return for their pragmatism. That little bit of climate protection? That bit of energy transition? The delicate one Hint of basic child protection?
Proof of this is provided by a open letter, which more than 500 members signed shortly before the party conference. They accuse their leaders of turning the former party of change into an “advertising agency for bad compromises.”
This is more than just a funny phrase. And that’s why this party conference is not entirely safe for the government Greens, especially Robert Habeck. Not because he could face the wrath of the delegates at any time. He can handle it, he has to endure it, especially with the Greens.
Something else should worry him more. It has to do with the verdict that took place last week just eight kilometers from the conference venue Federal Constitutional Court was announced and has kept the country and the traffic lights in suspense ever since. That decision on the budget, the debt brake, the many special funds worth billions.
Since then, many Greens have feared that things could become even tighter for climate protection or social issues, for basic child welfare or the heating law. Everything is open these days. Everything is conceivable.
Habeck has to describe a course that he doesn’t know
Habeck wants to speak twice in the course of these four days, at least. He has to achieve the rhetorical feat of describing a course that he himself doesn’t even know yet. He has to promote a solution without having anything concrete in hand. He has to ask for the necessary legroom from people who trust him less and less; who, on the contrary, would like to put shackles on him so that his next political steps only follow the party line.
You can read it in the letter from the base: “When it comes to groundbreaking decisions, we would like to have a say beforehand, instead of the members being moderated afterwards,” it says. This method could perhaps be used to pacify his party – but it would certainly not be possible to govern a country.
Habeck has experienced this before, almost exactly a year ago at the party conference in Bonn. At that time, an extension of the service life of the last three remaining German nuclear power plants was under discussion in order to survive the first winter without Russian energy imports. The traffic light had not previously agreed to a compromise. The LNG and Lützerath-Annoyed Greens discussed each other in a rage – and the helpless Habeck was only able to prevent his own people from torpedoing his idea of an operational reserve with a decision that would not last a minute longer. In the end, the Chancellor himself had to resolve the traffic light dispute Word of power decide.
Of course, history doesn’t repeat itself. But if so, then as a tragedy. This time the discontent could erupt over the issue of migration or the budget. Or in the board elections. Maybe that’s why it was a wise decision by Robert Habeck (also by Annalena, by the way Baerbock) that he has announced as a precautionary measure that he will forego a seat on the party council in the future. At least he will be spared punishment in the elections.