Is the momentum of the Greens in Germany deflating?
This weekend, the German Green Party will decide its program for the federal elections in September, in which it will play an important role in deciding who will succeed Merkel. Many Germans received the news with surprise: in May, the Green Party managed to outperform Chancellor Angela Merkels all-powerful conservative bloc in polls. Polls ranked the Greens first in voting intention with about 27 percent, while the CDU / CSU Conservatives came in at 24 percent. This led analysts to question whether Germany, which will elect a new parliament and Merkels successor in September, is close to taking an unprecedented political turn at the federal level. The Greens, after all, have been more of a minor player in German national politics, but never have they come so close to making one of their candidates the new German chancellor. The good moment was due to the image of his newly appointed candidate, Annalena Baerbock; to the importance that climate protection has acquired in Germany and, furthermore, to the fact that its main rivals were immersed in crisis and internal conflicts. In recent weeks, however, the Greens have lost steam in the polls and Merkels conservative bloc took the lead again. A poll this week revealed that the Greens voting intention is at 22 percent., while the CDU / CSU reached 28 percent. Annalena Baerbock, co-leader of the German Greens party and her nominated chancellor candidate, leaves the podium after a speech at a party meeting in Berlin, Germany, on April 19, 2021. REUTERS  ANNEGRET HILSE  Worse still, while in May 43 percent of Germans believed that Annalena Baerbock would be a suitable chancellor, now only 28 percent support her while the majority (64 percent) doubt it. A fall of the Greens in Saxony-Anhalt  Part of the problem is because in the recent regional elections in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, the Greens barely got 5.9 percent of the vote, which was described as a disappointment.  The Greens have generally struggled in eastern Germany, not least because environmental issues  their flagship project  are not among voters top priorities. So no one was counting on them reaching their level of support at the national level. But as Baerbock said, they did expect a better result than they achieved in this last electoral test before the September elections. The performance in that small eastern state, where the Conservatives triumphed, became the latest headache for Baerbock, who has come under fire for several recent lapses, including questions about his professional ethics. Baerbock had to adjust and correct information presented in her resume, after being accused of exaggerating her relations with international organizations, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He also acknowledged as a mistake not having declared in Parliament additional income that he received from his party worth around 25,000 euros, which in Germany is a requirement. I am upset with myself because this was a mistake, and when I found out I recorded it immediately afterwards, said Baerbock, who has been a co-leader of their match since 2018. These controversies not only affected its popularity, but also put the party on the defensive and led the German media to doubt the long-term impact of the party. The weekly Die Zeit, an influential medium in the country, wondered, for example, if the uproar around Baerbock is ending. It was the rising star of spring, explained the newspaper. Now the green candidate has had some unpleasant days.  Climate policy as a key issue  This bad timing is not to say that Baerbock and the Greens have lost all the momentum they had built up. In fact, if you look at their long-term evolution, the Greens have improved since the last federal elections, in 2017, as analyst Ursula Mnch explains to France 24. At that time they only got 8.9 percent of the vote nationwide, but since then they have steadily increased, says Mnch, who heads the Academy of Political Education in Tutzing, in the south of the country. One of the key elements to understand this increase is that they knew how to take advantage of the growing interest in Germany for climate protection, one of its key issues since they were developed in the 1980s as a pacifist and environmental project. Mnch explains that for the September elections, the Greens will be able to focus strongly on climate policy, as there is correspondingly high demand. But, of course, that will not be enough for a party that even presents a candidate for chancellor, he adds. Hence, the Greens try to present themselves as a party with broader proposals, which can attract voters, especially from the center-left. That broader political program will be one of the goals of this weekends party conference, in which Baerbock is also expected to be officially ratified as chancellor candidate. An invaluable gift  In any case, the truth is that the last weeks of the Greens and in particular of Baerbock have been problematic. In particular, the regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt not only revealed some of its weaknesses but, above all, strengthened its main rivals, the conservatives of the CDU / CSU. The CDU prevailed overwhelmingly, with 37 percent of the vote, a victory that has been interpreted as a key boost to its candidate for chancellor, Armin Laschet. The political magazine Der Spiegel, for example, explained that voters in Saxony Anhalt gave Laschet an invaluable gift.  Of course, there are still three months to go to determine whether Laschet can seize that gift and turn it into a victory for his conservative bloc in the September 26 federal election, the first without Angela Merkel in 16 years. Or, if instead, the Greens and Annalena Baerbock can regain ground and assert themselves to usher in a very different new era in Germany. The truth is that the political campaign in the country, which will end with the election of Merkels successor, is getting more and more interesting and lthe vast majority of Germans believe that nothing has yet been decided.