Berlin “Departure instead of carrying on like this” is the motto of the party congress of the Greens. But the start is a long time coming. Because not all the delegates who took part are in the Rheinbeckhallen in Berlin on time, the electoral party conference does not start at 11 a.m. as planned, but a good 20 minutes late.
Federal managing director and election campaign manager Michael Kellner appealed to party members to mobilize all their strengths once again on the final spurt before the federal elections in order to be able to form the next government “preferably together with the SPD”. As the Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock had previously stated in an interview with Handelsblatt, Kellner would also like to see the Union in the opposition.
Nevertheless, SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz will not be “spared” in the third TV triall this Sunday evening as well as in the next few days. The differences to the SPD are perhaps smaller, but still large, said Kellner, for example on the question of the coal exit. He did not comment on the Left Party. The closest there is to the SPD, “the rest will have to be explored in talks.”
The Greens are currently in third place after the SPD and Union. Fractional leader Anton Hofreiter called on his fellow campaigners to fight for “our candidate for chancellor to become chancellor”.
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When Annalena Baerbock stepped on stage shortly after eleven thirty, she was celebrated with a standing ovation. Above all, Baerbock thanked co-party leader Robert Habeck for his support over the past few weeks.
The Greens are relying on undecided voters to catch up
And she campaigned for a policy change. Every third voter is still undecided, said the 40-year-old, who is the first candidate for chancellor in the 40-year history of the Greens. That is 20 million people who can still be mobilized to vote for green and thus for departure.
In the 2017 federal election, the Greens got 8.9 percent of the vote, making them the smallest parliamentary group after the Union, SPD, AfD, FDP and Left Party. The next government, so Baerbock, must be a climate government. And these only exist if green is chosen. So that climate protection does not overtax the poorer sections of the population, the Greens present the six-page lead motion “Social pact for climate-friendly prosperity” at the party congress.
It is not now a question of saying what does not work, accused Baerbock Union and SPD. The “messing around with the grand coalition” had to be ended, the last few years had been wasted. She also demanded that one should put an end to the supposed opposition between the market and the state.
Baden-Württemberg’s Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann supported Baerbock and her thesis that bans are innovation drivers. In this debate, he asked for calm, said the 73-year-old. “We need guard rails to give the market a direction.” Anyone who claims that it works without it has “not understood at all” the social market economy.
It is not about innovation or bans, said the Green politician. It is about the right mix of prices, regulatory policy and funding. In Baden-Württemberg, almost six percent of economic output is spent on research and development. “It is twice and three times as much as in the countries that are led by red or black,” said Kretschmann. “Three times as much as in the countries in which the proverbs world champions from the FDP are squatting.”
There is only one party that knows what to do in these times, said Kretschmann. And there is only one candidate who has the drive to implement it: “That is Annalena Baerbock.”
Robert Habeck sharply criticizes the election campaign
At the end of the party conference, co-party leader Robert Habeck spoke, the man who would have liked to be his party’s candidate for chancellor himself, but who had let Baerbock go first in April. “We are experiencing a transition between epochs, the Merkel era will end,” said Habeck, expressing his respect for the current chancellor. You have given the country a lot and kept it stable, with a high willingness to make sacrifices and a very high level of personal integrity. But now it is urgently necessary that this political era come to an end.
Habeck criticized the previous election campaign. “We got stuck in stupid, stupid debates that were repeatedly pulled up by political competitors and blocked the actual discussions,” he said. Habeck accused the coalition of sitting out the debates, of having made himself “comfortable”. The actual challenges had not been discussed in the past few months.
“We are faced with fundamental questions,” he said in his combative, emotional speech. “Do we give answers or do we stick to the lack of answers?”
It’s not about the Greens at all, said the 52-year-old North German, who is applying for a direct mandate for the Bundestag in Flensburg. The point is that politicians have to act on an equal footing with the problems. It is about that this country get a government that is able to react to the immense challenges.
The fact that you “have already put eight sausages in” and ask yourself whether you can still afford the ninth sausage even though you feel bad after the eighth, “that seems to be the social question in Germany,” he said. “We with our ailing bridges, we with our delayed trains, with our dead spots, our shortage of skilled workers, our tired politics,” said Habeck. “The mistakes are bad enough, but the pride in the mistakes, that knocks the bottom out.”
More: Interview with Annalena Baerbock: “I would love to rule together with the SPD”