German Green Party co-leader Renate Künast has made a reserved statement on the question of whether Chancellor candidate Robert Habeck should become the faction leader in the new Bundestag. “I wish for both of them to play an important role after the election – whether in the faction or in the government” she told the news magazine Politico.
Both Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, she said, had achieved a good result in the election campaign despite the many obstacles and had inspired many new members to join the Green Party. According to the Greens, over 42,000 new members have joined the party in recent times, bringing the total membership to 168,000.
Meanwhile, the current faction leader of the Greens, Katharina Dröge, is only willing to engage in coalition talks with the Union under certain conditions. “We are prepared to hold these coalition talks and we are saying very clearly that we will approach them with our own expectations” Dröge told the broadcasters RTL and ntv.
“That is once how a chancellor will behave in the future” she said, criticizing Friedrich Merz’s election campaign for dividing the country. “It is the job of a chancellor to bring the country together.” Dröge also mentioned that other issues will be important in the coalition talks, such as the progress that can be made on climate protection. She emphasized, however, that the Greens will not achieve the same results as in the last Bundestag election, which she attributed to the fact that the previous coalition had broken apart.