Berlin It almost sounds like a threat that the newly elected leaders of the Green Youth are sending into the exploratory rounds for a traffic light alliance. If the talks with the SPD and FDP resulted in a government “that we do not support in terms of content, then we will behave accordingly,” says Sarah-Lee Heinrich, who on Saturday at the federal congress in Erfurt, together with Timon Dzienus, headed the Green Party -The offspring was chosen. “It doesn’t do us any good if we end up with a traffic light that makes GroKo politics.”
Decisive climate protection, more rights for refugees, affordable rents: The Green Youth has clear expectations of the new federal government. A Jamaica alliance with the Union is out of the question. The youngsters rejected this by resolution. “The next government must ensure that we now embark on a path that limits global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” says the co-head of the Green Youth, Dzienus. And that will not work without an earlier coal phase-out and a higher CO2 price.
The young have a tailwind in the traffic light parties: a quarter of the new SPD parliamentary group are young socialists, and the Greens and FDP were the winners of the first-time voters with 23 percent approval each. In the entire group of young voters up to 25 years of age, the Greens and FDP are ahead with 23 and 21 percent respectively. The SPD elected 15 percent of the first-time voters.
The SPD and FDP’s youngsters do not want to continue like this either, but rather a departure. The young FDP MPs interpret the leap of faith of this generation as a mandate to put topics such as digitization, opportunities for advancement, education, but also “free market” climate protection at the center of a new coalition – and demand more say.
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In the last legislative period, the Liberals were the youngest parliamentary group in the Bundestag. In 2021, 25 of the 92 Liberal MPs will be under 40 years of age. They organize themselves in their own group, the “Young Group”, support each other in initiatives and bring motions to the Bundestag together. “We work very closely together,” reports Nicole Bauer, who at 34 belongs to the young guard of the FDP and also works as the parliamentary group’s spokesperson for women’s politics.
Bauer sees that many young people not only give the FDP their vote, but also apply for membership right away. “After the general election, many young people joined the FDP,” says Bauer. But she also sees the encouragement of the younger generation as a mandate to “make Germany fitter”.
Konstantin Kuhle, 32, who has just been re-elected for a second legislative period as a member of the FDP, also sees the young people’s vote as an invitation, for example to advance the modernization of the state. “Many young FDP voters find that their digital reality is not reflected in the state,” said Kuhle.
Do not lump youth together
He also sees the topics of education, digitization, climate change and career opportunities as central construction sites for the young generation. However, according to Kuhle, one shouldn’t lump “the young” together. Although there is a momentum of departure, the concerns are quite different. “This is a very heterogeneous group that can neither be generally described as the ‘Generation Greta’ nor the ‘Generation FDP'”, says Kuhle.
The young Greens have their own interpretation of the question of why the FDP performed so strongly among the youth. “Conservatives in particular are playing with young people’s fears about the future by saying: Climate protection is anti-social,” says the Green Youth leader Heinrich. “I understand that this catches up with young people who are worried about their future.”
The next federal government must prove all the more that climate protection also makes life better for young people who did their training, drove by car and lived in the village. “Now it will show whether the FDP really wants to talk to us about social justice at the table and whether we can finally make progress on the subject,” she says.
The new young MPs of the Greens also have high expectations of the next government, shows a survey by the Handelsblatt. “The good results of the Bundestag election and the high approval for us Greens among young voters have shown that it is urgently necessary to address the key issues of this time – climate crisis, digitization and Europe – including the acceptance of politics among younger people to increase, ”says Philip Krämer, one of 22 Green MPs under 30 years of age. In total, the Greens are represented by 118 members in the new Bundestag.
“The election result confirmed that the younger generation wanted a real departure and that they were counting on us Greens to stand up for their priorities,” says 28-year-old Melis Sekmen. “This is a task that we take very seriously and to which we feel obliged.” However, it is now the task of the exploration teams to sound out more precisely.
“We see that the younger generation has recently become more vehement again and want to assert their interests because they see their own future viability being questioned,” says Uwe Jun, political scientist and party researcher from the University of Trier. Especially through the “Fridays for Future” movement, the concerns of young people such as climate protection are more present. This will also be reflected in the coalition negotiations.
The former people’s parties, the SPD and Union, would have to worry about the poor approval ratings of the younger generation. “It must be important to these parties to reconnect with the younger generation,” says Jun.
Jun sees some catching up to do in the party base of the SPD and Union, which is mainly characterized by older members. “The party structures are disadvantageous for the younger population,” says Jun. In fact, the average age of the party members in the SPD and Union is over 60 years.
The fact that many Jusos will be represented in the new SPD parliamentary group is a positive signal in this regard. “The older MPs are not very familiar with the world of the younger generation,” says Jun. That is why the average age of MPs is also important for representing young concerns.
The young MPs could be successful if they appeared together and publicly as possible. “Then they can develop the most clout,” says Jun.
Coal exit, Hartz IV, tax relief
But so far restraint has been the order of the day. “From our point of view, the time has not yet come for us to weigh individual demands from the SPD future program against each other,” said the spokesman for Juso boss Jessica Rosenthal, who has also moved into the Bundestag. “Should coalition talks take place after the explorations, it is our aim to sit at the table as Jusos. For us it is about social progress such as overcoming Hartz IV, as well as the implementation of our youth policy demands. “
This also includes bringing forward the coal phase-out. “A coal phase-out in 2038 is far too late,” said Rosenthal a few days ago to the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post” and the Bonn “General-Anzeiger”. Rosenthal did not want to name a specific earlier exit date. “But I don’t think much of putting any year numbers in the room that are not tenable. The faster we get out of coal, the more we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in one fell swoop. “
In addition, Rosenthal had spoken out against tax relief for high earners and the rich. “A relief for the top ten percent is unthinkable for me.” With the super-rich there is an “ever greater concentration of wealth”. If, after the corona crisis, in which the state “rightly took on a lot of debts” in order to save jobs, the richest were relieved, they would have “zero understanding”.
At the same time, Rosenthal spoke out in favor of reintroducing the wealth tax in Germany. “I think that’s very important. The federal government would not decide that alone, as it would be a state tax. That is why the federal government and the Union-led states would also have a say. “
Collaboration: Martin Greive
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