The Green Party of Germany elects new leadership team focused on climate

As the Greens Party of Germany tries to adjusts to its role in the country’s new government coalition, the climate-focused party elected a new leadership team on Saturday, promising to continue fighting for the party’s basic causes, particularly tackling climate change.

The party’s co-leaders will be Omid Nouripour, 46, and Ricarda Lang, 28. They succeed Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, the party’s leaders since 2018, who have both been appointed to cabinet positions in Germany’s new government. Baerbock is the country’s new foreign minister, while Habeck is a vice chancellor and economics and climate minister.

Under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the three-party coalition of the center-left Social Democrats, the Greens, and the pro-business Free Democrats gained power in December. After 16 years of Angela Merkel’s leadership, the government ushers in a new era for the Greens, who haven’t been in power since 2005.

On a national level, the Greens have usually had two leaders, one woman and one man. Lang ran unopposed, whereas Nouripour had two opponents but easily won.

Nouripour is a senior Greens politician who has served in the Bundestag since 2006. He was born in Iran and emigrated to Germany when he was 13 years old. He formerly served on the national board of the party and as its foreign policy spokesman.

Lang, who is 28 years old, is the Greens’ youngest ever leader. Lang joined the party’s youth branch and served as its spokeswoman on women’s issues until being elected to the Bundestag in September. She is regarded as a representative of the party’s left side.

The two lawmakers will have to follow in the footsteps of Baerbock and Habeck, who are well-liked inside the party and widely credited with expanding the Green Party’s voting base in recent years. They also need to reshape the Greens so that they can work with the government coalition rather than against it.

In their remarks, both nodded to those challenges.

“They need our solidarity,” Nouripour said of Baerbock, Habeck, and other Greens leaders, “but they also need a clever and self-assured party” to help them develop their objectives even further.

“Governing isn’t a punishment, it’s a big possibility,” Lang added, encouraging party members to consider concessions as an opportunity.