The Greens emerge from the election relatively stable despite losses. Formation of the political will within and outside of parties must reorganise itself. Democratic parties must remain able to compromise among themselves in order to fulfil their responsibility for the political order in Germany and beyond.
I. Decline of the old mainstream parties and strengthening of the fringes continues
The centre of the spectrum of democratic parties is shrinking; as in other Western countries, the fringes are emerging stronger from this Bundestag election.
- The CDU/CSU may have come away with the most votes, but far fewer than even hoped for and expected in mid-January, and a far cry from Angela Merkel's successes. The old mainstream-party CDU/CSU is also deeply divided internally, including over its willingness to cooperate with openly anti-constitutional forces in Germany. There is also a vagueness in parts of the CDU/CSU, right up to the top, about how to deal with authoritarian to totalitarian regimes, which must come as a surprise in the party of Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl. In terms of content, the CDU/CSU remains vague; on fundamental challenges such as the transformation to a climate-neutral economy in Germany and Europe, it provides contradictory answers at best, and there are huge gaps in the financing of its projects. The fact that the CDU/CSU and, above all, its lead candidate have focused on polarisation until the very end may have brought it a few additional votes temporarily, but this categorical departure from the previous motto of ‘moderation and middle ground’ could prove fatal when it comes to forming the necessary coalitions.
- Social democracy (SPD) has achieved its worst result since 1887. This result is in line with the trend of social democratic parties in Europe; the classic social democratic environments are evaporating. The SPD's almost uninterrupted participation in government since 1998 makes it increasingly difficult to distance itself from undesirable developments and at the same time maintain its claim to reforms. Olaf Scholz epitomises almost ideally the lack of clarity about the SPD's profile in 2025.
- It is uncertain whether the “liberals” (FDP) will be able to recover having been missed the 5% threshold to be represented in parliament for the second time since 1949. This party and its leader symbolise the failure of the ‘traffic light’ coalition’s nature: important compromises reached after difficult negotiations were repeatedly called into question by the FDP after just a few hours. This is no way for politics to gain acceptance.
- The fact that the Left has prevailed over the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) after a long period of agony appears to be good news on the surface. Now the left must also show materially that it can act with overall responsibility for Europe, which means, for example, showing tangible solidarity with those attacked by aggressors.
- The AfD's gains are an expression of an intensified radicalisation of the traditional centre-right, which reinforces an anti-system attitude. This is symbolised by the jubilation of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag on 29 January 2025, when a motion tabled by the CDU/CSU with AfD ideas and diction received a majority.
The high voter turnout reflects the strong uncertainty in large parts of society and therefore the increased interest in participation. However, it should be noted that the result cannot be interpreted as a victory for one party or one political trend.
II. Attacks on the sidelines: persistent policies and social broadening by Alliance 90/The Greens
Although Alliance 90/The Greens lost in percentage terms (11.6% compared to 14.8% in 2021), it still got off lightly compared to the SPD and FDP after the extremely unpopular ‘traffic light’ government coalition. In absolute figures, compared to 6,847,712 (2021), it received 5,761,476 votes in 2025.
The Green political programme and orientation continues to be the benchmark for professional political debates in many policy areas where changes and further developments in the future are at stake. There have been attempts to hug green reform ideas like trees (Markus Söder, CSU), but these were quickly caught out as poor plagiarism or second-best solutions. Since before the 2021 Federal elections, writers and activists close to the CDU/CSU, FDP and Free Voters’ Alliance - not to mention the AfD - have vilified Green policy approaches, Green politicians and the party as a whole in such a way that personal and physical attacks on Green politicians and Green offices have increased significantly. The enemy image of ‘The Greens’ spared the competitors from having to deal with the content of Green political approaches. This is presumably also the point of these attacks. The extended voter potential, i.e. the number of people who could imagine voting for the Greens in principle, fell significantly between 2020 and 2023. Conversely, the proportion of those who stated that they would definitely not vote for the Greens rose sharply.
Compared to a low point in the summer of 2024, which was reflected in European elections, local elections and some state elections, Alliance 90/The Greens emerged from the ‘traffic light’ coalition relatively stable despite strong headwinds.
Alliance 90/The Greens has not yet succeeded in regaining the power to define its own image outside of the classic green-orientated milieus, which it still had from the 2019 European elections to the 2021 Federal elections. However, with his personal popularity and his credible endeavours to communicate respectfully on an equal footing, always seeing the human side of things, Robert Habeck has managed to break down some of the hardening that has occurred. Compared to a low point in the summer of 2024, which was reflected in the European elections, local elections and some state elections, Alliance 90/The Greens emerged from the ‘traffic light’ coalition relatively stable despite strong headwinds.
It was precisely the contrast between inflammatory attacks on the one hand and more open communication on the other that led to an unprecedented effect of solidarity, which increased the number of Green members to almost 170,000 by the time of the Federal elections. At around 42,000 people, a quarter of members had joined in the three months since the 'traffic light' coalition broke up in November 2024. Saxony recently became the first Federal state in which the Greens have more members than the SPD. This could indeed be a historic tipping point. It remains open to speculation whether a later election date or a longer election campaign would have enabled the Greens to reach out more strongly to other milieus.
If Alliance 90/The Greens had followed some calls at a critical point and ruled out a coalition with the CDU/CSU in principle, significantly fewer voters would presumably have switched to the left. However, a responsibility towards the people in this country and also for Europe requires a fundamental willingness to share government responsibility with democratic forces. The desire not to compromise with other democratic forces and thus seemingly keep a clean slate would be tantamount to shirking responsibility.
In order for Alliance 90/The Greens to be able to shape its own public image in the future with a strong claim to shaping society, the following steps, among others, appear necessary:
- A renewal of internal party will formation processes with their institutions and mechanisms that are just as open to input and responsiveness from new members as it is to long-standing activists and at the same time remains open towards a broader civil society in terms of speech and culture. It is very important that other parties and social groups also hold debates on future priorities as a basis for broad social will formation and compromise.
- Make expectations of Green government participation transparent and deliberate. In connection with political will formation, there could be an exchange about the expectations that members, sympathisers and voters associate with government participation in (unavoidable) coalition governments, as well as the expectations that are raised or dampened by those politically responsible. The differences in the party's key policy areas of ‘climate protection’ and ‘dealing with refugees’ in particular appear to be less a result of different political objectives within the party. Rather, they are the result of fundamentally different assessments of what participation in a coalition government can achieve - and what it cannot, possibly also in the wider context of European decision-making.
- New channels of communication as a reaction to the structural change in the public sphere. Right-wing portals and channels in particular, often supported by fossil fuel lobbies or from abroad, have been running specific smear campaigns against Alliance 90/The Greens and its leading politicians for years, dramatically distorting the image of green politics. The consequences of this can even be seen in public broadcasting and the greatly diminished regional press. New paths need to be taken here that go beyond the defensive defence against messages of hate and violence and the subsequent correction of misleading representations.
- The enormous growth in membership should make it possible to join forces in smaller towns or neighbourhoods and become visible in places where they have not previously been present. The scary image of the Greens spread by third parties is based on distortions that are easiest to dispel by putting down roots on the ground and meeting at eye level. Close involvement in the activities of an open civil society with a commitment to the local area and region can also build and strengthen trust in practised democracy.
III. In view of the global situation, a solution-orientated ability to compromise is required from all parties involved
Against the backdrop of the global situation, many people in Europe and beyond are looking to Germany, where - despite all the prophecies of doom about coalition conflicts - we have a fairly stable political and social order on the whole.
It is now a question of ensuring that this political order also functions in particularly challenging times: Will it be possible to form a new government within a reasonable period of time that finds the necessary compromises, manages internal cooperation and makes practically effective and viable decisions? Will this government be able to provide orientation in Europe and the world and at the same time be a reliable partner?
A new governing coalition will only be able to succeed if it works out serious compromises that may involve impositions on various sides, but which nevertheless represent solutions to real problems and are not merely the mean value of election campaign positions.
It will not be enough to base important political decisions, including those whose relevance extends beyond Germany, on the narrowest of all conceivable parliamentary majorities. We will always have to rely on the constructive co-operation of the democratic opposition and the Bundesrat.
Governing authoritatively through measures whose implementation is hardly possible, whose benefits are unclear, whose collateral damage is incalculably expensive and which would also be unlawful and an affront to European neighbours, will not strengthen confidence in the ability of politicians to act and find solutions. Nor will this initiative of late January 2025 by chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz contain the AfD, from whose arsenal the proposed measures originate, or solve an initial problem.
With its judgement in 2023, the Federal Constitutional Court put an end to the long-standing practice of the Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz governments of filling in political rifts in the coalitions with a lot of money, at least temporarily. Both the cycle path concept and the motorway section were financed additively; a future-oriented deliberative conflict resolution with exponents of polarisation in parliament and in society as a whole did not and does not take place in this way. Coalition and budget negotiations are exactly the right place in parliamentary democracy to thoroughly discuss and broadly communicate fundamental decisions for the future. There is a participating audience in the centre of society, which is still described as ‘broad’ in studies by Steffen Mau (‘Triggerpunkte’), for an exhausting and protracted struggle for a recognisably future-oriented output. There is also a corridor for a constructive and viable compromise for the long overdue reform of the ‘debt brake’, whose current form (as well as part of the interpretation by the Federal Constitutional Court) is less a supportive than a constricting corset for a future-oriented policy.
Serious search for solutions, listening, truthfulness and respect in dealing with each other, the ability to compromise, sustainability, reliability - these are important prerequisites for the success of a government, which were not fulfilled by the ‘traffic light’ coalition, at least in public communication. A new governing coalition will only be successful if it works out serious compromises that may involve impositions on various sides, but which nevertheless represent solutions to real problems and are not merely the mean value of election campaign positions. The task of compromise-orientated politics will be to distribute the necessary impositions as fairly as possible. The unavoidable dispute about this should be conducted with respect.
When reporting on negotiated compromises, it is often a problem that the media first focus on which party or parliamentary group has supposedly ‘won’ the negotiations. It would also be more important for citizens if the media were to scrutinise whether and to what extent the proposed solutions presented do justice to the problems. Then there would also be an opportunity for an increase in trust. A political will formation process that is open to participation, a stringent, transparent and responsive decision-making process and an output that shows citizens the political effectiveness of good governance pave the way for gaining trust.
This article was first published in German on boell.de.
