German Greens pick Economy Minister Habeck to lead snap election campaign

WIESBADEN, Germany — Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, was chosen on Sunday to represent the Greens in the race to become the country’s next chancellor early next year.

Habeck won an overwhelming 96.5 percent of votes during a Green Party conference in Wiesbaden. He will lead the party’s upcoming federal election campaign together with fellow Greens member and current Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

In his speech at the conference, Habeck said he’d considered retiring from politics, but his fighting spirit returned when his children reminded him of a tip he gave them while swimming: “You have to move, or you’ll sink.”

Although the party is entering the snap election campaign with new leadership, it doesn’t yet have answers to the major crises facing Germany.

There was little time for substance in Wiesbaden as the party’s election program won’t be adopted until the end of January. At the conference, the discussions focused on inheritance tax, reform of the debt brake, and asylum policy with a compromise that bans deportations to Afghanistan and Syria.

Meanwhile, the new Green Party co-leader Felix Banaszak told POLITICO he’s hopeful a coalition with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) could still work.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz, “will have to answer for himself whether he wants to tear down bridges or leave them in place … And then we’ll see what works.” Banaszak said.

Banaszak previously negotiated a CDU-Greens coalition agreement in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Incumbent Chancellor Olaf Scholz called a snap election for Feb. 23 after his coalition government — which comprises the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the economically liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) — collapsed over disagreements on spending and a stimulus for Germany’s sputtering economy.

The Greens currently have 11 percent support, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, good for fourth spot behind the CDU at 33 percent, the far-right Alternative for Germany (18 percent) and the SPD (16 percent).

After winning the Greens nomination, Habeck vowed to provide the German people with “an offer of confidence” in the party’s campaign, calling for a focus on innovation, social cohesion and education. “If we don’t just stare at the problems, but actively tackle them, we can solve them. That is what I stand for,” he wrote on X.

“All the disputes, all the compromises that we had to make [in the country’s three-way ruling coalition] are now gone,” Habeck added. “And now the parties are stepping forward with their own ideas. Now a lot can change on all fronts.”

This story has been updated.