Rebellious Jusos? Was yesterday. When Olaf Scholz, probably the next Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, visits the Federal Jusos Congress on Saturday, the party’s youngsters are greeted as well as rarely. A request from the conference committee to the delegates, just in time for Scholz’s arrival at the Frankfurt conference hall, will be remembered: “It is important that you all sit nicely in your seats when Olaf comes.”
And that’s what they do when Scholz arrives shortly before 11 a.m. The 63-year-old is earlier than expected. At first hardly anyone notices when Scholz enters the hall at the side of Juso boss Jessica Rosenthal. And then applause breaks out. “It’s a reception at the Juso Congress as you imagine it,” says Jessica Rosenthal a little later on the stage. Scholz stands by her side.
A performance as one imagines it?
It is quite possible that Scholz has completely different ideas in mind when he thinks about the Jusos. When Scholz led the party into the grand coalition at the side of the former SPD leader Andrea Nahles, Kevin Kühnert, the predecessor of Jessica Rosenthal at the top of Juso, fought on the side of Groko’s opponents. When Scholz wanted to become party leader in 2019, Kühnert brought his Jusos against Scholz in position to prevent him from becoming chairman. They had signed a truce for the time of the election campaign.
And today? Rosenthal speaks of the “teamwork” that the SPD will soon have brought to the Chancellery. She wants to know from Scholz how he envisions the future “cooperation”. “I imagine that you are often excited about the government’s actions.” Scholz smiled and some of the delegates in the hall were laughing.
“The others only spoke to us very rarely”
Scholz was also a Juso once. From 1982 to 1988 he was federal vice-chairman for young talent. With what he believed in back then, he would easily overtake Kühnert on the left today. But that was a long time ago. He had also broken with his Juso past: “I detoxified myself, the practice became more important to me than the rituals of a political organization,” he once told him mirrors about the cut he made back then. He could repeat that now when Rosenthal asks him what he has learned from the Jusos. But he says: “It is always important that you also put your heart into it.” He goes on to say that the Jusos were already happy when the federal manager showed up at their meeting. “The others rarely spoke to us.”
Scholz can’t get past the Jusos today. Kevin Kühnert has been promoted to party vice. In the SPD parliamentary group, 49 of the 206 parliamentarians are of Juso age. Under Kühnert, the Jusos have become a power factor. His successor Rosenthal says: “We now have more means of power in our hands than ever before.”
In the election manifesto, the SPD leaders included demands from the Jusos such as a training place guarantee, a student loan reform and a modernization of social policy. Much of this can be found in the coalition agreement with the Greens and the FDP. But with the Jusos it also applies: what has been achieved is never enough. Olaf Scholz also gets to feel this when the Jusos in Frankfurt now have their say. “Discussion with Olaf Scholz” is the title of the program.
The first speaker complained that the agreements in the coalition agreement on citizens’ money, which is supposed to replace Hartz IV, remained too vague. Scholz should please clarify here and now that the standard rates would then also be increased. But he doesn’t do that later.
Another complains that the traffic light partners are planning a “repatriation offensive” for those who have no right to stay in Germany. That is a “tough step backwards”. And what, if you go, has become of the rent moratorium, someone asks. On the other hand, says Lara Herter, Juso functionary from Baden-Württemberg: “How cool it is that we will soon be out of the grocery store.” It does not occur to anyone that this alliance is not going to work. That’s something.
Scholz is allowed to go on stage again to answer. He wants the big picture to be seen, not just what is printed in the contract. When he was Juso, he only knew Helmut Kohl as head of government. Most of the people in the audience today only knew Merkel as head of government. But that is changing now. “We shouldn’t lose the momentum now,” says Scholz.
He takes an hour and a half for the Jusos. As a farewell, Jessica Rosenthal hands him a large, red Juso flag. For the Chancellery. And Scholz gets a little book, the “Schwerin Manifesto”, as she says: “These are our main lines”. Scholz flips through it like a flip book and puts it away. He has to go now, rule again.