Just don’t go back into the niche, warns the Green party leadership. In the midst of its low polls, the party is writing a European election program that focuses primarily on prosperity, security and order – and less on the issues and motives of its core clientele. This could cause discord internally
The Greens now have a new design. It’s mainly about colors and typefaces, but the innovations are more nuances. Most striking: The green is now darker. “We call it ‘fir’,” says Federal Managing Director Emily Büning about the color as she presents the European election program in Berlin together with party leaders Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour. The darker green is “more supportive of the state” and symbolizes the responsibility that the Greens have long taken on in the federal government. In short: bright green was yesterday and that’s exactly how the Greens sell their ideas for the future of the European Union. “What protects us” is the name of the approximately 100-page draft program, which still has to be approved by a party conference. It focuses on the issues of prosperity, security and order and, above all, derives the need for a consistent climate protection policy from these goals.
The election program covers – as usual – the entire spectrum of political topics, so the focus is particularly interesting. At a time when people are primarily concerned about the conflict with Russia and the immense economic challenges and quite a few of them hold the Greens partly responsible for these problems, the party obviously does not want to draw attention to itself through climate alarmism, and certainly not with such polarizing topics as refugee distribution and sea rescue. That’s all in the program, but the focus is clearly on the people who don’t already reliably vote for the environmental party.
Beijing and Washington also help in the argument
There is no lack of proposals on topics that concern almost everyone: the party is promoting an infrastructure union that brings together the electricity grids and efforts to expand renewable energies. Europe should pump money into its own resilience and into future industries. “We cannot afford to stop investing,” says Omnipour. However, he cannot yet give an estimate of how much money the 28 member states should spend on this. It will be difficult for the Greens to have a say in the coming EU Parliament anyway. Conservative, right-wing populist and nationalist parties are on the rise across Europe. Greens, Social Democrats and left-wing parties are likely to lose influence in Brussels and Strasbourg in 2024.
Another project: The Greens are calling for a European platform for rail travel throughout the entire Union. “A transparent, consumer-friendly and comprehensive ticketing system” is the goal, says Lang. “We want there to be one platform where you can buy a ticket if you want to go from Berlin to Madrid or to Vilnius,” says Nouripour. Both feel encouraged by the success of the 49 euro ticket in Germany and hope for a kind of flat rate tariff across EU countries in the long term. The climate protection party even addresses the concerns of passengers.
A delicate turnaround
The narrative of green economic growth is, as it has been for years, central to the party’s election program. While people in Germany mostly experience the consequences of dependence on fossil fuels and the costs of the slow transition to renewable energies – despite all efforts – as an imposition, the USA and China, with their billions in subsidies for renewable energies, are still providing the Greens with arguments from a few years ago An unexpected side: If Europe doesn’t invest in green technologies of the future now, it will be left behind economically, is the tenor of the green election program.
In return, the party – or at least its leadership – is prepared to take a step towards the advocates of a technological approach to dealing with the climate crisis: “In a few sectors, however, there will continue to be emissions in the future that are severe or, according to today’s standards, Technology cannot be avoided at all, for example in the cement industry,” says the election manifesto. “In these areas we want to take advantage of technological opportunities and capture, store and, if necessary, use the CO2 directly during production. Where necessary, this should be actively promoted.”
So far, the Greens have strictly rejected the storage of CO2 (carbon capture storage) in suitable layers of earth. Globally, however, the view has prevailed that the goals for reducing emissions cannot be achieved without the use of new technologies and Robert Habeck is one of the most prominent Greens who is calling for a rethink within their own ranks. The Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection had already visited the new plant of a subsidiary of Heidelberg Materials in Norway, which relies on CCS. Habeck doesn’t just want to link decarbonization with the re-industrialization of Germany as an official, even if the trend is currently in the opposite direction.
The proposal is likely to once again divide opinion within the party: Lang, who represents the left wing of the party, calls the debate “a damn difficult question” but refers to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has spoken out in favor of the use of this technology. When asked by the dpa news agency, Green climate politician Lisa Badum formulated cautious criticism: “It is better to leave the CO2 in the ground than to inject it back into the ground with great effort and a lot of money. Before we halve the amount of waste burned or have initiated a real construction transition, we don’t need to talk about CCS in waste incineration or the cement industry.” Decarbonization must be a priority instead of relying on expensive technologies.
Don’t go back to the “niche”
The topic is therefore predestined to provoke opposition at the Federal Delegates Conference in Karlsruhe at the end of November. At the four-day party conference, not only are the party executives and the candidates from the green European electoral list elected, but the election program is also finalized. In addition to CO2 storage, escape, migration and sea rescue are also likely to move the base. In the 2019 European elections, the topic took up three times as much space in a program that was almost twice as long and found itself at the heart of the text. In the new draft, on the other hand, there are just three pages on the topic near the end.
After the Greens argued about the European asylum compromise at the small party conference in Bad Vilbel in the spring and the general mood in the country is more in favor of limiting migration, the Greens do not want to go into the election campaign next year primarily as advocates for refugee rights – the only election campaign in 2024 that could bring any degree of success, while in the three state elections in the east losses and a massive gain for the self-declared opponents of the Greens from the AfD are expected.
While the Greens called for the fight against nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment in the preamble of their program in 2019, they now say in the introduction about election day June 9, 2024: “It’s about nothing less than our peace and prosperity.” The subsequent argument about what role the EU plays in Germany’s well-being is at least as state-supporting in tone as the color “fir tree”.
In Bad Vilbel, Habeck passionately called on his party not to allow itself to be pushed back into the “niche” and into old trench warfare in view of the sharp headwind for the party. The program clearly avoids potential targets for political opponents to portray the Greens as a banned party. With this strategy, the European elections are also a test balloon for the federal elections a year later. The party leadership of Lang, Nouripour and Büning, who are expected to be re-elected in November, will manage both elections. In nine months the three will know where they stand with their approach to a broad, centrist people’s party.