Berlin Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour are the new party leaders of the Greens. In the election at the federal delegates’ conference, Lang received 75.9 percent of the votes. 552 of the 727 delegates voted in favor, 137 against and 38 abstained.
Nouripour got 82.5 percent of the votes. He had two opponents and received 621 of the 752 votes. 38 voted no, 16 abstained. The candidate Mathias Ilka received 17 votes and Thorsten Kirschke 60 votes.
For her application speech at the Green delegates’ conference, the new party leader Ricarda Lang did not have a large stage, but an unadorned white wall. Lang was connected to the Berlin Velodrom from the room in her apartment because she had previously tested positive for Corona.
“Oh my god, that was my first thought when I got the result,” she said in her speech. But she knows that others have been hit much harder by the pandemic than her – such as parents and caregivers. “There is no waiting around with the corona and climate crises.” This comes with a great responsibility – namely to give people security and confidence. That’s why governing is not a punishment, but a “huge opportunity.”
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The party must now show that climate protection and social justice belong together. “The climate crisis is a social crisis,” she said. She appealed to the party’s experience, courage and willingness to change to cope with this task. “I’d love to be with you,” she concluded to applause from the venue.
After her speech, the delegates voted for Lang – she had no opposing candidate and thus succeeded Annalena Baerbock as party leader. The co-chairman Nouripour prevailed in a further ballot.
Long-awaited “signal of unity”
Before the party congress, Lang caught up with a misstep by the old federal executive board, to which she belongs. Investigations into corona bonus payments of 1,500 euros became known last week. However, she was calm. “That’s been known for a long time and the bonuses have been paid back,” she said. She assumes that the topic will be closed soon.
She expected a “signal of unity” from the party congress, as she told the German Press Agency. “Nevertheless, one thing is clear: we will continue to have lively debates on the content. That is what makes our party what it is.” Lang, 28 years old, belongs to the left wing of the party and was promoted to the federal executive board in November 2019. Previously, the Stuttgart native was chairwoman of the Green Youth and networked well in the party during this time. In September she entered the Bundestag for the first time. She is the first openly bisexual MP in Parliament.
In her political career, she campaigned for the Greens to become more diverse – and called for better opportunities for advancement for people, regardless of their origin, gender and sexual orientation. She is still committed to these issues to this day, most recently taking over the leadership of the working group on equality and diversity in the traffic light soundings for the Greens.
>> Read here: Candidate for the Greens presidency Nouripour on the bonus affair: “The political price was already paid in the election campaign”
The fact that she now leads the second-strongest governing party may come as a surprise to many. According to the party, she positioned herself early on. Although Lang is not one of the front row, she is still too unknown to a larger public for that. But she stands for the future of the Greens and is also extremely assertive. She is also one of the most audible Greens on social media – also because of the many hate attacks on her appearance, which she repeatedly opposes eloquently.
Nouripour wants to reorganize party structure
In his speech at the Berlin Velodrom, Nouripour thanked previous chairmen Habeck and Baerbock for their “incredible achievement” in bringing the Greens into a new sphere. Now the implementation of the coalition agreement is beginning, said Nouripour. That means a “hard job”, especially for the five green ministers. “They need our support, they need our solidarity, but they also need the impetus of a smart and self-confident party.” It will not be a sure-fire success, “but I feel like it”.
“The coalition agreement is certainly not what we wanted,” Nouripour continued, “but it clearly bears a green handwriting.”
The Green politician was born in Tehran in Iran in 1975 and attended primary and secondary school there. In 1988 he came to Frankfurt am Main, attended high school there and did his Abitur. In Mainz he studied German philology, political science, philosophy and law, but did not graduate.
Nouripour, who describes himself as a “Frankfurt boy”, has been active in the Greens since 1996. He has been a member of the Bundestag since 2006, when he came into parliament as a successor to former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. He is an experienced foreign policy expert and has been his group’s foreign policy spokesman for the past eight years. In the federal elections last year, Nouripour was the first Green politician in Hesse to win a direct mandate for his party.
In the future, he will also have to fly the flag more when it comes to domestic political issues. He wants to reorganize the party structures, together with the new federal executive board. In the future, this team will also include Emily Büning, who was elected the new Federal Political Secretary on Saturday, succeeding Michael Kellner. Kellner had switched to the position of parliamentary state secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Protection from ex-Green leader Habeck.
“This election campaign was new territory for the party,” Nouripour told the Handelsblatt a few days ago. “Mistakes happened there, even with an office that couldn’t keep up with the speed at which tasks and numbers of members grew.” That had to be worked through, “in order to attack again next time and as the leading force of the center left to play along in the K-question”.
Party colleagues see the Nouripour/Lang team as a “strong duo”. A member of parliament told the Handelsblatt that he was counting on the two building up an “operational apparatus” and also improving crisis communication. The election campaign was “stumbled”. The party has to deliver now.
There are also great expectations of advancing the party programmatically. Nouripour has already announced that he will “leave his own footprints.” It is wrong to believe that one can follow in the footsteps of predecessors and fill them, he told the Handelsblatt.
During the tenure of Habeck and Baerbock, the Greens were more successful than ever. Even if they did not meet their goal of getting more than 20 percent of the vote, the Greens recorded the best result in their history with 14.8 percent and are back on the government bench after 16 years.
More: Between climate and economy – Robert Habeck’s fine line