Background The Green Party was initially founded in West Germany as
Die Grünen (the Greens) in January 1980. It grew out of the
anti-nuclear energy, environmental, peace,
new left, and new social movements of the late 20th century. More specifically, social and political movements that contributed to the milieu that produced the Greens included protests during the 1970s against
Wyhl and
Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plants, the nuclear waste processing facility at
Gorleben and the construction of a new runway at
Frankfurt Airport, and the grassroots civic
Citizens' Initiative movement. Alternative left groups that flourished after the SPD abandoned Marxism, entered a
grand coalition with the
CDU/CSU under Christian Democratic chancellor
Kurt Georg Kiesinger, and later
banned radical activists from being employed as civil servants, also formed a movement that contributed to the party's formation, including the
Außerparlamentarische Opposition, the
West German student movement, the
K-Groups and the
Spontis, as did a broader alternative subculture that included collectives, cooperatives, communes, self-help groups,
new religious movements and cultural organisations. Between 1977 and 1979 local parties running on on environmental and peace issues were established across West Germany. Although most environmental and anti-nuclear activists were initially sceptical of these efforts, a lack of results from
pressure group activity and early electoral successes meant the approach gained momentum and led to local groups amalgamating into state-level parties.
Grüne Liste Umweltschutz (GLU - green list for environmental protection) was the name used for some branches in
Lower Saxony and other states in the Federal Republic of Germany, including Hamburg,
Hesse,
North Rhine-Westphalia,
Rhineland-Palatinate and
Baden-Württemberg. Most GLU branches merged with The Greens in 1980. The
West Berlin state branch of The Greens was founded as
Alternative Liste, or precisely,
Alternative Liste für Demokratie und Umweltschutz (AL; alternative list for democracy and environmental protection) in 1978 and became the official West Berlin branch of The Greens in 1980. In 1993, it renamed to Alliance 90/The Greens Berlin after the merger with East Berlin's Greens and Alliance 90. The
Hamburg state branch of the Green Party was called
Grün-Alternative Liste Hamburg (GAL; green-alternative list) from its foundation in 1982 until 2012. In 1984, it became the official Hamburg branch of The Greens. In July 1978 former Christian Democrat
Herbert Gruhl founded
Grüne Aktion Zukunft (GAZ - green action future) as the beginning of a process to establish a nationwide green party. Among the groups expressing interest in this were the
Bundesverband Bürgerinitiativen Umweltschutz (BBU - federal association of citizen's initiatives for environmental protection), a movement of citizen's initiative groups focused on anti-nuclear and environmental issues, members of the
anthroposophy movement, the
Free International University, Spontis and disaffected Social Democrats. In February 1979 an electoral alliance was established to contest
the first democratic elections to the European Parliament later that year under the name
Sonstige Politische Vereinigung Die Grünen (SPV-Die Grünen - alternative political alliance, the greens). As German electoral law provided for a generous scheme for reimbursement of
election expenses, providing them to all parties scoring at least 0.5 percent of the vote, the new formation netted 4.8 million deutschmarks, after spending just 300,000 on its campaign. This money was spent on establishing state and national party infrastructure. SPV-Die Grünen's success led to increased activist interest, with membership rising to around 10,000 by the end of 1979, and the Alternative and Multicoloured Lists showing more interest in joining forces with the other green groups. A congress in October 1979 to agree a programme for the national party led to heated disagreements over economic orientation and non-violence and whether dual membership with other parties was to be permitted. Whilst the latter was resolved by agreeing to devolve decisions on membership to local branches, the former was overcome by the adoption of what would become known as the four pillars of green politics: ecology, social responsibility, grassroots democracy and non-violence. Journalist and activist
August Haußleiter claimed to have proposed these and secured the agreement of the leaders of the right (Gruhl) and left (
Jürgen Reents) factions at the conference. The nascent movement received a further boost the same month when the
Bremer Grüne Liste became the first green party to win seats in a state parliament, securing four seats in
Bremen's election.
12–13 January 1980: Foundation congress The political party
The Greens () sprung out of the wave of
New Social Movements that were active in the 1970s, including
environmentalist,
anti-war, and
anti-nuclear movements which can trace their origin to the
student protests of 1968. Officially founded as a German national party on 13 January 1980 in
Karlsruhe, the party sought to give these movements political and parliamentary representation, as the pre-existing
people's parties were not organised in a way to address their stated issues. Its membership included organisers from former attempts to achieve institutional representation such as and
AUD. Opposition to pollution, use of
nuclear power,
NATO military action, and certain aspects of
industrialised society were principal campaign issues. The party also championed
sexual liberation and some of their members supported the abolition of
age-of-consent laws. The formation of a party was purportedly first discussed by movement leaders in 1978. Important figures in the first years were – among others –
Petra Kelly,
Joschka Fischer,
Gert Bastian, ,
Rudolf Bahro,
Joseph Beuys,
Antje Vollmer, ,
August Haußleiter,
Luise Rinser, ,
Christian Ströbele,
Jutta Ditfurth,
Baldur Springmann and
Werner Vogel. In the foundational congress of 1980 , the ideological tenets of the party were consolidated, proclaiming the famous Four Pillars of the Green Party: •
Social justice •
Ecological wisdom •
Grassroots democracy •
Nonviolence 1980s: Parliamentary representation on the federal level As the 1980s commenced, the movement built on their success in the 1979 Bremen state elections, winning six seats in the
1980 Baden-Württemberg state election and nine seats in the
1981 West Berlin state election, although the result in the
1980 West German federal election was disappointing, with only 1.5 percent of the vote scored. Although this was implemented in 1984 after long negotiations between the Greens and the SPD, with the former voting in favour of
Holger Börner as minister-president and the SPD budget in June, the agreement broke down in December over subsidising the expansion of the
Nukem / Alkem nuclear enrichment plant in
Hanau. Despite this negotiations immediately commenced over terms for a coalition agreement. Although the
party's Bundestag faction had limited success in legislating during the new MPs' first term, they were able to influence debate inside and outside parliament through proposing bills and asking questions. In addition,
Otto Schily's work as part of the parliamentary committee investigating the
Flick affair, concerning illicit payments to the established German parliamentary parties by businessman
Friedrich Karl Flick, was particularly notable, pressuring SPD colleagues to refrain from
whitewashing the matter and scuppering an attempt by the
Kohl government to pass an amnesty for those involved. However, the faction's efforts were disrupted by the attempt to implement rotation of members halfway through their terms as had been planned before the 1983 election. All elected Bundestag members except Petra Kelly stepped down to enable rotation, however of the seven Green MEPs elected in the
1984 European election only three resigned from their roles. The rotation stipulation was subsequently abolished, however the departure of many Bundestag members who had received significant media attention upon their entry to parliament led to reduced press interest in the parliamentary faction's work. Progress was made in elections in 1984. As well as entering the European Parliament for the first time, the party increased their share of the vote from 5.3 to eight percent and took a total of nine seats in the
1984 Baden-Württemberg state election, whilst in local elections it exceeded the five percent electoral threshold for the first time in
Saarland and
Rhineland-Palatinate and scored over eight percent in
North Rhine-Westphalia. Meanwhile, in
local elections in Hesse both the SPD and Greens made gains, with the vote of the latter rising to 7.1 percent. Shortly after Börner offered a coalition deal to the Greens which included the position of
environment and energy minister. The Greens were divided about accepting the offer, particularly after a demonstrator, Günter Sarre, was killed by police at an
anti-fascist protest in Hesse's largest city,
Frankfurt in September: the state party accepted the coalition offer shortly afterwards, prompting a denunciation by
Jutta Ditfurth on behalf of the federal party.
Joschka Fischer took up the ministerial post, whilst
Marita Haibach was made
secretary of state for woman's affairs. At the federal party conference in
Offenburg in December, the party's
fundi faction, which had been hostile to the coalition agreement, took control of the party's executive. In 1986, the intra-party conflict reduced somewhat. A party conference in
Hanover that Easter voted for an immediate end to nuclear power and the end of the coalition in Hesse. In
that year's Lower Saxony state election, the governing Christian Democrats mounted a
smear campaign against the Greens, releasing details about party officials from police records, caricaturing party policy, and claiming that they were
foreign agents of the
Soviet Union and that the movement had both political and paramilitary wings along the lines of
ETA. These attacks limited the party's gains to 0.6 percent of the vote, failing to add to the 11 seats won at the previous state election. However, in the
Bavarian state election the party entered parliament for the first time, winning 7.5 percent of the vote and 15 seats, whilst in the
Hamburg elections an all-female list secured 10.4 percent of votes and 13 seats, whilst neither the CDU or SPD secured a parliamentary majority. Partly due to the impact of the
Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and to growing awareness of the threat of air pollution and
acid rain to German forests (), the Greens increased their share of the vote to in the
1987 federal election, winning 42 seats plus two non-voting West Berlin delegates. Around this time,
Joschka Fischer emerged as the unofficial leader of the party, which he remained until resigning all leadership posts following the
2005 federal election. Following the federal election, factional tensions over strategy re-emerged. The Hesse party withdrew from their coalition with the SPD, over the same nuclear enrichment plant which had led to the collapse of the previous confidence and supply agreement. At the subsequent
1987 Hessian state election, the SPD vote declined, leading to a coalition of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats entering government, but the Green vote increased to 9.4 percent, securing them 10 seats. In the
Hamburg election held to resolve the deadlock resulting from the previous year's poll, the Green vote dropped to 7.1 percent, losing them five seats, whilst the SPD and FDP were able to form a coalition. Meanwhile in
Rhineland-Palatinate the Greens entered parliament for the first time, taking 5.9 percent of the vote and six seats. Later that year in
state elections in Schleswig-Holstein the state Green party, which was opposed to participating in any coalition, failed to enter parliament and won only 3.9 percent of the vote, whilst in
Bremen they almost doubled their vote to 10.2 percent and won ten seats. Tensions were further inflamed by the killing of two police officers and injury of nine others by
autonomist activists at a protest at Frankfurt Airport. Whilst the bulk of the party condemned the killings, some on the left including Ditfurth and
Thomas Ebermann did not. The growing disagreements at the federal level resulted in a crisis meeting in December 1987, following by a perspective congress in June 1988. The Greens were the target of attempts by the East German secret police to enlist the cooperation of members who were willing to align the party with the agenda of the
German Democratic Republic. The party ranks included several politicians who were later discovered to have been
Stasi agents, including
Bundestag representative Dirk Schneider,
European Parliament representative
Brigitte Heinrich, and
Red Army Faction defense lawyer
Klaus Croissant. Greens politician and Bundestag representative
Gert Bastian was also a founding member of , a pacifist group created and funded by the Stasi, the revelation of which may have contributed to the murder-suicide in which he killed his partner and Greens founder
Petra Kelly. A study commissioned by the Greens determined that 15 to 20 members intimately cooperated with the Stasi and another 450 to 500 had been informants. Until 1987, the Greens included a faction involved in
pedophile activism, the short for (approx.
working group "Gays, Pederasts and Transsexuals"). This faction campaigned for repealing § 176 of the German penal code, dealing with
child sexual abuse. This group was controversial within the party itself, and was seen as partly responsible for the poor election result of 1985.
This controversy re-surfaced in 2013 and chairwoman
Claudia Roth stated she welcomed an independent scientific investigation on the extent of influence pedophile activists had on the party in the mid-1980s. In November 2014, the political scientist Franz Walter presented the final report about his research on a press conference.
1990s: German reunification, electoral failure in the West, formation of Alliance 90/The Greens logo In the
1990 federal elections, taking place post-
reunified Germany, the Greens in the West did not pass the 5% limit required to win seats in the Bundestag. It was only due to a temporary modification of German election law, applying the five-percent "hurdle" separately in East and West Germany, that the Greens acquired any parliamentary seats at all. This happened because in the
new states of Germany, the Greens, in a joint effort with
Alliance 90, a heterogeneous grouping of
civil rights activists, were able to gain more than 5% of the vote. Some critics attribute this poor performance to the reluctance of the campaign to cater to the prevalent mood of
nationalism, instead focusing on subjects such as
global warming. A campaign poster at the time proudly stated, "Everyone is talking about Germany; we're talking about the weather!", paraphrasing a popular slogan of
Deutsche Bundesbahn, the German national railway. The party also opposed imminent reunification that was in process, instead wanting to initiate debates on ecology and nuclear issues before reunification causing a drop in support in Western Germany. After the
1994 federal election; however, the merged party returned to the Bundestag, and the Greens received 7.3% of the vote nationwide and 49 seats.
1998–2002: Greens as governing party, first term (velotaxi) in front of the German Bundestag in Berlin with the Alliance 90/The Greens livery for the
2005 federal election In the
1998 federal election, despite a slight fall in their percentage of the vote (6.7%), the Greens retained 47 seats and joined the federal government for the first time in '
Red-Green'
coalition government with the
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
Joschka Fischer became
Vice-Chancellor of Germany and
foreign minister in the new government, which had two other Green ministers (
Andrea Fischer, later
Renate Künast, and
Jürgen Trittin). Almost immediately the party was plunged into a crisis by the question of German participation in the
NATO actions in Kosovo. Numerous anti-war party members resigned their party membership when the first post-war deployment of German troops in a military conflict abroad occurred under a Red-Green government, and the party began to experience a long string of defeats in local and state-level elections. Disappointment with the Green participation in government increased when anti-nuclear power activists realised that shutting down the nation's nuclear power stations would not happen as quickly as they wished, and numerous pro-business SPD members of the federal cabinet opposed the environmentalist agenda of the Greens, calling for tacit compromises. In 2001, the party experienced a further crisis as some Green Members of Parliament refused to back the government's plan of sending military personnel to help with the
2001 invasion of Afghanistan.
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder called a vote of confidence, tying it to his strategy on the war. Four Green MPs and one Social Democrat voted against the government, but Schröder was still able to command a majority. On the other hand, the Greens achieved a major success as a governing party through the 2000 decision to phase out the use of nuclear energy.
Minister of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety Jürgen Trittin reached an agreement with energy companies on the gradual phasing out of
the country's nineteen nuclear power plants and a cessation of civil usage of nuclear power by 2020. This was authorised through the
Nuclear Exit Law. Based on an estimate of 32 years as the normal period of operation for a nuclear power plant, the agreement defines precisely how much energy a power plant is allowed to produce before being shut down. This law has since been overturned.
2002–2005: Greens as governing party, second term Despite the crises of the preceding electoral period, in the
2002 federal election, the Greens increased their total to 55 seats (in a smaller parliament) and 8.6%. This was partly due to the perception that the internal debate over the war in Afghanistan had been more honest and open than in other parties, and one of the MPs who had voted against the Afghanistan deployment,
Hans-Christian Ströbele, was directly elected to the Bundestag as a district representative for the
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg – Prenzlauer Berg East constituency in Berlin, becoming the first Green to ever gain a
first-past-the-post seat in Germany. The Greens benefited from increased inroads among traditionally left-wing demographics which had benefited from Green-initiated legislation in the 1998–2002 term, such as environmentalists (
Renewable Energies Act) and LGBT groups (
Registered Partnership Law). Perhaps most important for determining the success of both the Greens and the SPD was the increasing threat of war in Iraq, which was highly unpopular with the German public, and helped gather votes for the parties which had taken a stand against participation in this war. Despite losses for the SPD, the Red-Green coalition government retained a very slight majority in the Bundestag (4 seats) and was renewed, with
Joschka Fischer as foreign minister,
Renate Künast as minister for consumer protection, nutrition and agriculture, and
Jürgen Trittin as minister for the environment. One internal issue in 2002 was the failed attempt to settle a long-standing discussion about the question of whether members of parliament should be allowed to become members of the party executive. Two party conventions declined to change the party statute. The necessary majority of two-thirds was missed by a small margin. As a result, former party chairpersons
Fritz Kuhn and
Claudia Roth (who had been elected to parliament that year) were no longer able to continue in their executive function and were replaced by former party secretary general
Reinhard Bütikofer and former Bundestag member
Angelika Beer. The party then held a member referendum on this question in the spring of 2003 which changed the party statute. Now members of parliament may be elected for two of the six seats of the party executive, as long as they are not ministers or caucus leaders. 57% of all party members voted in the member referendum, with 67% voting in favor of the change. The referendum was only the second in the history of Alliance 90/The Greens, the first having been held about the merger of the Greens and Alliance 90. In 2004, after Angelika Beer was elected to the
European Parliament, Claudia Roth was elected to replace her as party chair. The only party convention in 2003 was planned for November 2003, but about 20% of the local organisations forced the federal party to hold a special party convention in
Cottbus early to discuss the party position regarding
Agenda 2010, a major reform of the German welfare programmes planned by Chancellor Schröder. The November 2003 party convention was held in
Dresden and decided the election platform for the 2004
European Parliament elections. The German Green list for these elections was headed by
Rebecca Harms (then leader of the Green party in Lower Saxony) and
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, previously Member of the European Parliament for
The Greens of France. The November 2003 convention is also noteworthy because it was the first convention of a German political party ever to use an
electronic voting system. The Greens gained a record 13 of Germany's 99 seats in these elections, mainly due to the perceived competence of Green ministers in the federal government and the unpopularity of the
Social Democratic Party. In early 2005, the Greens were the target of the
German Visa Affair 2005, instigated in the media by the
Christian Democratic Union (CDU). At the end of April 2005, they celebrated the decommissioning of the
Obrigheim nuclear power station. They also continue to support a bill for an
Anti-Discrimination Law () in the
Bundestag. In May 2005, the only remaining state-level
red-green coalition government lost the vote in the
North Rhine-Westphalia state election, leaving only the federal government with participation of the Greens (apart from local governments). In the early
2005 federal election the party incurred very small losses and achieved 8.1% of the vote and 51 seats. However, due to larger losses of the SPD, the previous coalition no longer had a majority in the Bundestag.
2005–2021: In opposition For almost two years after the federal election in 2005, the Greens were not part of any government at the state or federal level. In June 2007, the Greens in
Bremen entered into a coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) following the
2007 Bremen state election. In April 2008, following the
2008 Hamburg state election, the Green-Alternative List (GAL) in
Hamburg entered into a coalition with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the first state-level coalition in Germany. Although the GAL had to agree to the deepening of the
Elbe River, the construction of a new
coal-fired power station and two road projects they had opposed, they also received some significant concessions from the CDU. These included reforming state schools by increasing the number of primary school
educational stages, the restoration of trams as public transportation in the
city-state, and more
pedestrian-friendly real estate development. On 29 November 2010, the coalition collapsed, resulting in
an election that was won by SPD. Following the
Saarland state election of August 2009, The Greens held the balance of power after a close election where no two-party coalitions could create a stable
majority government. After negotiations, the Saarland Greens rejected the option of a left-wing 'red-red-green' coalition with the SPD and
The Left () in order to form a centre-right state government with the CDU and
Free Democratic Party (FDP), a historical first time that a
Jamaica coalition has formed in German politics. In June 2010, in the first state election following the victory of the
CDU/CSU and FDP in the
2009 federal election, the "black-yellow" CDU-FDP coalition in
North Rhine-Westphalia under
Jürgen Rüttgers lost its majority. The Greens and the SPD came one seat short of a governing majority, but after multiple negotiations about coalitions of SPD and Greens with either the FDP or The Left, the SPD and Greens decided to form a
minority government, which was possible because under the
constitution of North Rhine-Westphalia a plurality of seats is sufficient to elect a
minister-president. So a red-green government in a state where it was defeated under
Peer Steinbrück in 2005 came into office again on 14 June 2010 with the election of
Hannelore Kraft as minister-president (
Cabinet Kraft I). The Greens founded the first international chapter of a German political party in the U.S. on 13 April 2008 at the
Goethe-Institut in Washington D.C. Its main goal is "to provide a platform for politically active and green-oriented German citizens, in and beyond Washington D.C., to discuss and actively participate in German Green politics. [...] to foster professional and personal exchange, channeling the outcomes towards the political discourse in Germany." In March 2011 (two weeks after the
Fukushima nuclear disaster had begun), the Greens made large gains in
Rhineland-Palatinate and in
Baden-Württemberg. In Baden-Württemberg they became the senior partner in a governing coalition for the first time.
Winfried Kretschmann is now the first Green to serve as
Minister-President of a German State (
Cabinet Kretschmann I and
II). Polling data from August 2011 indicated that one in five Germans supported the Greens. From 4 October 2011 to
4 September 2016, the party was represented in all state parliaments. Like the Social Democrats, the Greens backed Chancellor
Angela Merkel on most bailout votes in the German parliament during her second term, saying their pro-European stances overrode party politics. Shortly before the elections, the party plummeted to a four-year low in the polls, undermining efforts by
Peer Steinbrück's Social Democrats to unseat Merkel. While being in opposition on the federal level since 2005, the Greens have established themselves as a powerful force in Germany's political system. By 2016, the Greens had joined 11 out of 16 state governments in a variety of coalitions. Over the years, they have built up an informal structure called G-coordination to organize interests between the federal party office, the parliamentary group in the Bundestag, and the Greens governing on the state level. After the federal election and unsuccessful Jamaica negotiations, the party held elections for two new co-leaders; incumbents Özdemir and Peter did not stand for re-election.
Robert Habeck and
Annalena Baerbock were elected with 81% and 64% of votes, respectively. Habeck had served as deputy premier and environment minister in
Schleswig-Holstein since 2012, while Baerbock had been a leading figure in the party's Brandenburg branch since 2009. Their election was considered a break with tradition, as they were both members of the moderate wing. The Greens saw a major surge in support during the
Bavarian and
Hessian state elections in October 2018, becoming the second largest party in both. They subsequently rose to second place behind the CDU/CSU in national polling, averaging between 17% and 20% over the next six months. . Darker shades indicate a higher vote share. In the
2019 European Parliament election, the Greens achieved their best ever result in a national election, placing second with 20.5% of the vote and winning 21 seats. National polling released after the election showed a major boost for the party. The first poll after the election, conducted by Forsa, showed the Greens in first place on 27%. This was the first time the Greens had ever been in first place in a national opinion poll, and the first time in the history of the Federal Republic that any party other than the CDU/CSU or SPD had placed first in a national poll. This trend continued as polls from May to July showed the CDU/CSU and Greens trading first place, after which point the CDU/CSU pulled ahead once more. The Greens continued to poll in the low 20% range into early 2020. They suffered an unexpected decline in the
Thuringian election in October, only narrowing retaining their seats with 5.2%. In the February
2020 Hamburg state election, the Greens became the second largest party, winning 24.2% of votes cast. In March 2021, the Greens improved their performance in
Baden-Württemberg, where they remained the strongest party with 32.6% of votes, and
Rhineland-Palatinate, where they moved into third place with 9.3%. Due to their sustained position as the second most popular party in national polling ahead of the
September 2021 federal election, the Greens chose to forgo the traditional dual lead-candidacy in favour of selecting a single Chancellor candidate. Co-leader Annalena Baerbock was announced as Chancellor candidate on 19 April and formally confirmed on 12 June with 98.5% approval. The Greens surged in opinion polls in late April and May, briefly surpassing the CDU as the most popular party in the country, but their numbers slipped back after Baerbock was caught up in several controversies. Her personal popularity also fell below that of both
Armin Laschet and
Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor candidates for the CDU and SPD, respectively. The party's fortunes did not reverse even after the
July floods, which saw climate change return as the most important issue among voters. The situation worsened in August as the SPD surged into first place to the detriment of both the CDU and Greens.
2021–2025: Return to government The Greens finished in third place in the
2021 federal election with 14.8% of votes. Though their best ever federal election result, it was considered a bitter disappointment in light of their polling numbers during the previous three years. They entered coalition talks with the FDP and SPD, eventually joining a
traffic light coalition under Chancellor
Olaf Scholz which took office on 8 December 2021. The Greens have five ministers in the
Scholz cabinet, including Robert Habeck as Vice-Chancellor and Annalena Baerbock as foreign minister. Since party statute mandates that party leaders may not hold government office, Baerbock and Habeck stepped down after entering cabinet. At a party conference in January 2022,
Ricarda Lang and
Omid Nouripour were elected to succeed them. At the time of her election, Lang was 28 years old, speaker for women's issues, and a former leader of the
Green Youth. 46-year-old Nouripour was foreign affairs spokesman and a member of the Bundestag since 2006. Of the new leaders, Lang is considered a representative of the party's left-wing, while Nouripour represents the right-wing. Lang and Nouripour announced their resignations as party leaders in September 2024 after heavy defeats in the
Saxony,
Thuringia and
Brandenburg state elections that month, as well as the earlier
European Parliament election. In all three states, governing coalitions involving the Greens were not returned, and the party was wiped out in the latter two states while only narrowly retaining representation in Saxony. In the European elections, the Greens fell to fourth (behind the CDU/CSU, AfD and SPD) and lost 9 seats in the European parliament, falling to 12 seats. The party had fallen out of five state governments (additionally
Berlin and
Hesse) since entering the federal governing coalition in 2021. Analysts pointed to its participation in the federal government requiring it to take stances that are contrary to its traditional clean-energy and pacifist ideals, as well as a stark collapse in support with young voters.
Felix Banaszak and
Franziska Brantner elected as co-leaders in November 2024. During the
2024 government crisis, in which the FDP left the traffic light coalition, the Greens stayed in a red-green minority coalition. The party abstained in the succeeding vote of no confidence, ensuring the government's collapse and the calling of the 2025 federal election.
2025–present: Return to opposition The party chose incumbent
Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck as their
chancellor candidate for the
2025 federal election. The Greens would go on to lose 33 seats in that election, garnering 11.6% of the vote. The unpopularity of the Scholz cabinet has been credited with the result, although this was still the party's second best ever result. The morning after the election, co-chancellor candidate of
The Greens Robert Habeck announced his withdrawal from the party's leadership. The other co-candidate for The Greens,
Annalena Baerbock, as well as former party leader
Ricarda Lang, were expected to become the next party leaders in the Bundestag. ==Ideology and platform==