Federal Minister: Land comes first
Faeser now SPD top candidate in Hesse
06/17/2023, 06:18 p.m
She is currently Germany’s first Federal Minister of the Interior – but would rather become the first female Prime Minister in Hesse. Her party gives her the blessing: With a clear majority, she is chosen as the SPD’s top candidate – and immediately zeroes in on her political opponents.
With a large majority, a Hessian SPD party conference officially named Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser as the top candidate for the state elections on October 8th. She received 94.4 percent of the delegates’ votes in Hanau. There were 307 votes in favour, 13 against and five abstentions. Germany’s first female interior minister wants to become the first female prime minister in Hesse. She committed her party to an intensive election campaign. In Hesse, the SPD has been pushing the opposition bench for almost 25 years; black and green currently rule here.
The party congress was accompanied by protests against plans for a far-reaching reform of the European asylum system. Federal Interior Minister Faeser was also involved in the most recent compromise. Outside, demonstrators protested with the words “No detention camps on the external borders.” A group of anti-compromise protesters appeared in the hall wearing t-shirts that read “Not my Europe”.
Juso representatives rejected the accommodation of refugees in camps on the EU’s external borders. A constant sense of surveillance could harm the mental health and development of children and adolescents in particular. If individual EU states could “buy themselves free” from taking in refugees with sums of money, it would be inhuman.
Faeser to Jusos: “Heart in the right place”
With regard to drowned refugees, Faeser emphasized that “dying in the Mediterranean” must stop. She is proud of the Jusos, who are so committed to refugees: “Your heart is in the right place.” However, she did not have a majority in the negotiations between the EU interior ministers. However, it is important “that we can keep the individual right to asylum”. The Hessian ex-SPD leader Andrea Ypsilanti recently resigned from the party because of the compromise.
With a view to the Hessian election campaign, Faeser exclaimed: “Let’s get going today with a wonderful program.” She called the incumbent CDU Prime Minister Boris Rhein a “Greeting August” – as the future head of government she would tackle it and make a decision. With a view to her balancing act as Federal Minister of the Interior in Berlin and her aspiration to the Wiesbaden State Chancellery, Faeser affirmed: “My heart is in Hesse.” The 52-year-old lives there with her family in Schwalbach am Taunus.
“Nancy is the best”
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil said in Hanau: “Nancy is the best thing that can happen to Hesse.” Faeser accused the black-green state government in Wiesbaden of standstill, scandals and failures in social policy. At the SPD party conference with the motto and campaign slogan “The best forces for Hesse”, she promised to fight against the shortage of skilled workers, also with the help of immigrants, as well as improvements for kindergartens and schools, hospitals, care and the housing market.
The social democrat also emphasized the fight against right-wing extremism and violence against women as priorities. Faeser received five minutes of applause for her three-quarter hour keynote speech.