The Greens group met on Tuesday for an extraordinary meeting. She decided against running for the second seat in the Federal Council of the SVP.
Aline Trede, leader of the Greens, at the press conference on Tuesday.
The Greens have no candidate to succeed Federal Councilor Ueli Maurer. This was decided by the parliamentary group on Tuesday in an extraordinary meeting.
The faction leader Aline Trede justified this at the subsequent press conference: “We don’t want to waste energy in a fight in which the decision has already been made.” Not a single faction was willing to talk about a Federal Council seat for the Greens. “The Federal Council parties want to secure their power.”
Trede emphasized at the press conference that, despite today’s decision, the current situation requires the Greens to have a seat in the Federal Council. The climate crisis, the geopolitical situation and the standstill in negotiations with the European Union show that the bourgeois majority is unable to find solutions to the problems.
The die for the successor to Federal Councilor Ueli Maurer has already been cast. The Federal Council parties want to secure their power with a set-up game. The power cartel of the parties in the Federal Council forms a unified front more than ever. pic.twitter.com/Ih2Fb3BTgs
— GREEN Switzerland (@GrueneCH) October 18, 2022
The party now wants to await the autumn 2023 elections to decide whether to run in December’s general election. Then the question arises as to which party is contesting a seat.
candidacy with notice
After the successful national elections in 2019, the Green Party made no secret of the fact that it will demand a seat in the Federal Council in the future. In the 2019 elections, 13.2 percent of the voters were higher than that of the CVP (today Die Mitte).
The Greens want to overtake the Freisinn in the 2023 elections and win a seat in the Federal Council. That’s what Balthasar Glättli, President of the Greens, said recently in an interview with “NZZ am Sonntag”. In addition, another scenario could occur in the 2023 elections: if the SP continues to lose and the Greens gain again, the Greens could draw level with their comrades or even end up ahead of them.
After the resignation of SVP Federal Councilor Ueli Maurer, the question arose as to whether the Greens would nominate a candidate for the seat. Maurer’s successor will be determined on December 7th. According to a survey by the Sotomo research institute, at least 70 to 30 percent of the Greens are in favor of an attack on the SVP seat. However, the support in parliament for a Federal Council seat for the Greens is rather small.