German Greens party leaders resign after election losses

BERLIN

Co-leaders of Germany's Green party Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour give a press conference prior to a retreat of the party in Husum, northern Germany, on April 11, 2022

The co-leaders of Germany's Greens party, which is part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition government, announced their resignation on Wednesday following dire results in three state elections.

Co-leader Omid Nouripour said the ecologist party was suffering its "worst crisis in a decade" after scoring vote percentages in the single digits in three eastern state polls this month.

"It is time to put the fate of our party in new hands and we therefore ask... our beloved party to elect a new leadership," he told a press conference.

In Thuringia and Brandenburg states the Greens failed to cross the 5 percent threshold needed to enter parliament, and in Saxony they just scraped in.

Co-leader Ricarda Lang said the party "needs new faces to lead it out of this crisis" and oversee a "strategic reorientation" before national elections that are a year away.

Lang and Nouripour will remain in place until successors are elected at a party conference in mid-November.

The Greens are part of Germany's three-party coalition government along with Scholz's center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Economy Minister Robert Habeck are the most prominent Green cabinet members.

The government has seen its popularity slide amid internal bickering and a stalled economy.

All three parties suffered setbacks at the regional elections, with the FDP failing to enter any of the three state parliaments.