Greens boss: “I find the election success of the left as encouragement”

Mister BanaszakThere is a paper with the title: “It’s not easy to be a green party”…
Actually? If it were easy, others could do it too.

… a study that shows. Means: Greens are feel -good parties – in crisis times there is not much to get for them.
On the contrary, we take care of existential questions: the climate crisis, the collapse of the ecosystems. At the moment, however, these crises are overlaid by acute concerns about inflation and the risk of war, which is also understandable. We have to ensure that the climate crisis is getting back to the center and at the same time strengthening trust in our solution competence on other topics.

With the withdrawal of Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock If your party have lost the two most important leaders.
Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck decisively shaped the party – but the party consisted and consists of many more. Our task is now not to find the new superstar, but to organize a strongly grown party and to further develop our program for the new time. We start on our state council on Sunday.

The two ministers stood for the Hardcore Realo policy of the Greens. Does the pendulum now hit the opposite direction?
Every time has its political orientation. I cannot recommend negotiating them on such a woodcut -like film. As with the negotiations on the financial package, we keep it: consistently on the matter, constructive for the country.

You just make it. Again, the Greens are getting left now?
In the last few weeks before the election, many did not know what the Greens stand for. So we have to become greener and more recognizable, but we also have to appeal to people who have not always been green. Is that now “left”Because we want more clarity? Or is that “Realo”Because we strive for majorities? That is too easy for me.

What have the Greens doing wrong in the past?
We were too nice and too little defensive. Of course, we want to implement our content and therefore strive for government responsibility – but not at any price. There are compromises at the end of negotiations and not at the beginning.

Now you are in the opposition first. Will we experience more uncompromising Greens?
We will not touch Friedrich Merz with velvet gloves. It is emerging that the Union and the SPD form an anti -ecological reging coalition. It is all the more important that there is a powerful opposition with us.

The request of the recent years to make the Greens a People’s Party has failed terrific, and they have reached 11.6 percent in the election.
I have doubts whether the concept “Folk party” still applies. The SPD is at a historical deep, the Union has just 28 percent against the most unpopular government that this country has ever had. We will make a distinguishable policy that at the same time achieves so many people that we can even shape the country in a government, maybe even shape.

Do you think it is realistic that the Greens come over 20 percent?
Four years before the next election, it is too early to talk about percentages. But we do not give up the claim to become a leading power of the left center.

How is that supposed to work?
Last summer and autumn we were faced with a lot of hatred and rejection. In the election campaign we were able to reduce these reservations. And more and more people said: “The Greens know what concerns people.” We want to reinforce this and develop our politics from the everyday life of people.

Will you continue to sit down on kitchen tables, as Robert Habeck did in the election campaign?
No matter whether pub or shooting festival, neighborhood café or kitchen table – my claim is that we reach more people beyond our milieus in the big cities. We will go to the underground party, and as a party executive we will be traveling all over the country.

You share the opposition bench with a strengthened left -wing party to which you have lost many voices. What is your strategy?
I am worried that a number of people who might have chosen us have chosen the left on the last few meters. But the left is not my main opponent. I find your election success an encouragement. We are not dealing with one -sided legal shift, but there is a need for a progressive counter -draft. The Greens have to deliver it.

Do you have to become more activist?
We have to admit that we have disappointed some compromise in the government and our handling of it with parts of the climate movement. I now want to regain the lost trust.

You want one “Party for many” be in your leading application for the weekend. Don’t make the next mistake because this leads to ambiguity?
This is only apparently a contradiction. Politics means considering what is necessary and then winning people for it.

Some topics need clarification, for example in migration policy.
In migration policy, we have given too much -tuned picture in the past. We made decisions at every party conference and after that everyone still said what he always thought. Here we will establish a new mode that creates a greater liability. But unity is not obedient, but always the result of good leadership. Our members are not lemmings that just wait for someone to give them the direction.

That doesn’t sound as if they clarify the topic.
Our voters are of different opinion in many detailed questions about migration, but they unite the desire for a policy that dispenses with resentments and racism. We will not put up with the fact that migration in Germany only speaks as a problem. And at the same time we keep an eye on the challenges in the municipalities.

Does irregular migration have to be limited? This is a binary in the population, these words in Habeck’s migration plan caused trouble.
I can’t do anything with this sentence in the generality. What does this mean if someone is looking for protection with protection? Migration doesn’t stop just because I want it.

One could have the goal that those who are obliged to leave have to be deported faster than before.
Deportations are part of an orderly migration system. But they are not an end in themselves.

What does this mean?
So much is mixed together in the debate. When limited, the Union is the first to stop the family reunification. Family reunification is an absolutely regular form of migration. You know exactly who is coming – the women and children of those who are already here. Even with a security check. I advocate more realism and less striking headings.

Some in the coalition in Spe dream of a revival of nuclear power, in the Union plans to reactivate the six disused Meiler.
That is economic madness. No energy supplier would be so stupid to want to operate a nuclear power plant. And because it is not worth it, Friedrich Merz and his faction are now thinking about a state company. What an absurd debate! The Union should leave the ideological course again and devote itself to the future energies. Robert Habeck and the Greens have ensured that the expansion of the renewables finally progresses at the pace that we need. It would be a huge mistake to choke the energy transition.