For Germany’s Green party, bad things truly come in threes. On Sept. 25, the party’s entire leadership resigned following a major electoral defeat in the state of Brandenburg, marking the third consecutive state election this year in which the party saw a significant drop in its support.
At the press conference announcing their resignations, the Greens’ outgoing co-leader Omid Nouripour characterized the outcome in Brandenburg as “the most severe crisis our party has faced in a decade.” Standing alongside the party’s other outgoing co-leader, Ricarda Lang, he added, “It is time to entrust the future of our beloved party to new leadership.”
In Brandenburg as well as Thuringia earlier last month, the Greens failed to meet the 5 percent vote threshold required to enter the legislature. In Saxony, where voting had taken place on the same day as Thuringia, they only narrowly surpassed it. To add insult to injury and underscoring growing discontent within the party’s ranks, the entire executive committee of the Green Youth, the party’s youth organization, resigned their memberships en masse, citing plans to form a new left-wing youth organization.