OOfficially, the Greens do not talk about personnel issues – apart from the fact that Robert Habeck is to become finance minister. A green guy himself recently reported with refreshing frankness that it is actually different. The standard answer to the question about the personnel line-up is always: first the matter, then the person, said Jürgen Trittin on the Phoenix broadcaster and added: “It is a complete lie.” Even during the explorations, the parties would have to agree roughly which one The green top candidate of 2013 said that departments should be responsible for whom. One shouldn’t just talk about it in public.
Greens, who led the Jamaica explorations in 2017 at a crucial point, look back with a smile and tell how early all the important Greens – the really important ones and those that they feel are important ones – brought into play for the interesting jobs. And even now, it can be heard, many Greens have already raised their hands for posts in a future traffic light government and the parliamentary group.
Who will succeed Baerbock and Habeck?
There is wild speculation among the Greens about various scenarios and what they mean for the chances of other Greens: When Habeck becomes finance minister, when he becomes interior minister. Annalena Baerbock’s interviews on foreign policy are seen by party friends as a clue, and then they say she would rather be super climate minister. Has Anton Hofreiter been appointed Minister of Transport? Does Cem Özdemir have any serious prospects for a ministerial office after his success in the Stuttgart 1 constituency? And what will happen to Katrin Göring-Eckardt if it does not appear that the Federal President will vacate Bellevue Palace? How important wing arithmetic is still for the Greens can be seen on the exploration team: just as many reallos, who now call themselves reformers, as leftists. And of course never fewer women than men among the Greens.
Past experience has shown, however, that such considerations should not be of great importance. In 2017, the negotiators of the Union and the SPD made a final decision on the ministerial posts in the very last night meeting, many things turned out differently than expected – and so Horst Seehofer suddenly became Minister of the Interior, which even he hadn’t expected.
Two important posts will soon become vacant among the Greens, and the future coalition partners will not have a say in filling them: the party leaders. According to paragraph 16 of the statutes, members of the federal executive committee may not also belong to the federal government. At least that is the principle that since January 2018 it has been allowed for a transitional period of eight months. Habeck, at that time still environment minister in Schleswig-Holstein, had stipulated the change for his candidacy as party chairman. If he and Baerbock become ministers, they will have to vacate their chairs in party headquarters soon.
There is a second reason why the federal executive board must be reorganized: the division of office and mandate is no longer strictly applicable to the Greens, but no more than a third of the members of the federal executive board may be MPs, with six board members that is two. Since the federal election, however, alongside Baerbock and Habeck, federal managing directors Michael Kellner and the two deputy chairmen Ricarda Lang and Jamila Schäfer have also sat in the Bundestag.
The board of directors is newly elected at the party congress in January. In the slipstream of the debates on the ministerial posts, the Greens have positioned themselves without it having been an issue in the party or the public. According to information from the FAZ, Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour want to stand for election. From a green point of view, this duo has a compelling logic.
The party left Lang, 27 years old, is still very well networked in the Green Youth, whose spokeswoman she was until 2019. In recent years, young people have come to the Greens like no other party, and a considerable proportion of the new entrants – the Greens now have 120,000 members – are due to Fridays for Future. As part of the federal government, the Greens will have to make painful compromises and share responsibility for decisions that are not well received by the young and left-wing Greens. Lang, who is considered the darling of the green base, would play the role of mediator. As the daughter of a single social worker, she has a story to tell, and during the pandemic she familiarized herself with the subject of care. Now she is already in the group of the green main negotiators.
Omid Nouripour has been around a lot longer. The Realo already has experience working on the federal executive board, he was an assessor until 2006, then moved into the Bundestag as Joschka Fischer’s successor. Most recently he was the foreign policy spokesman for his group. In the general election, Nouripour won his constituency in Frankfurt directly for the first time. With the Tehran-born Muslim, the Greens would also refute the accusation of constantly talking about diversity, but not practicing it themselves. The last time there was trouble because the ten-person exploratory team did not include a Green with a migration background.
Nouripour and Lang are not without controversy in the party – anything else would be a surprise for the Greens. It is therefore quite possible that other candidates will throw their hats into the ring. Either way, the new chairmen are likely to play a less important role than Baerbock and Habeck. When the Greens rule, the power center is in the ministries, especially in Habecks, not on the square in front of the New Gate.
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