Berlin After two years in office, the SPD co-chairman Norbert Walter-Borjans has announced his retirement. The 69-year-old told the “Rheinische Post” (Saturday edition) that he would no longer run for the Social Democrats’ congress in December. “For me, the chairmanship was not associated with any further career planning from the outset, but the goal of getting the party on course,” he said. “With this mission I have come so far that I can say: Now younger people should take it.”
Walter-Borjans, together with the SPD member of the Bundestag Saskia Esken, won the member survey on the party chairmanship in 2019. The duo had prevailed against Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had stood with MP Klara Geywitz. Regardless of this, Scholz was chosen as the SPD’s candidate for chancellor for the federal election and is now about to succeed Angela Merkel.
Walter-Borjans said he left with the “good feeling that he had helped shape the SPD for two years”. “During this time we have shown that we can stick together and be successful with social democratic politics.”
Contrary to the long-lasting low in the polls, the SPD emerged from the September 26 election as the strongest force. The Social Democrats are currently negotiating with the Greens and the FDP to form a traffic light coalition. Walter-Borjans and Esken are part of the SPD leadership team in the talks.
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Walter-Borjans did not want to comment on his successor. But he was against the party leadership going into a new cabinet. “A member of the government as a party leader is necessarily always a piece of government spokesman,” he said. The previous division of labor – party chairmanship on the one hand and government office on the other – has proven its worth.
The SPD politician Ralf Stegner sees it similarly. Together with Gesine Schwan, with whom he had applied for the SPD chairmanship two years ago, “voted for the party leadership to support its own federal government in solidarity, but not to belong to it,” Stegner told the Handelsblatt. He still thinks that’s right. “It strengthens the orientation function of the social democratic party leadership that is necessary over the long term.”
Stegner also praised the services of Walter Borjans and co-party chairman Saskia Esken. “The unity in the successful Bundestag election campaign is on the credit side of the incumbent party leadership,” said the Bundestag member.
More: Follow the current developments after the federal election in our news blog.