Monika Heinold says she was so looking forward to this party congress.

To see each other again, to have a coffee.

And now it doesn't work again, pandemic, distance instead of closeness, that's difficult.

For Heinold, this also means that she has to get by with little applause when she is crowned the top candidate of the Greens in Schleswig-Holstein for the state elections in May 2022.

Only a few party friends are in the hall in Neumünster on Saturday, most of the delegates are connected digitally.

So it's a strange start to an election campaign that should be exciting.

After all, it is not only the Greens who are hoping for the State Chancellery.

"This time we want to be the strongest force," says Heinold.

Matthias Wyssuwa

Political correspondent for Northern Germany and Scandinavia based in Hamburg.

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Schleswig-Holstein used to be something of a pioneer. This is what it looked like in 2017, when Daniel Günther and his CDU ousted the SPD from the state chancellery and formed a Jamaica coalition with the Greens and FDP. When a few months later the three parties wanted to try it at the federal level, the advice from Kiel was asked. Now a traffic light coalition rules in Berlin, and it is not only the SPD in Schleswig-Holstein that sees itself strengthened in its hope of a change in Kiel. Günther cannot expect too much loyalty to the previous alliance from the Greens either. And so the state elections in Schleswig-Holstein in May should not only be close for him, but also an important test of the mood for the new Berlin alliance.

In any case, with Heinold, the Greens are going to vote with a candidate who has already headed the Ministry of Finance under SPD leadership and is now doing it under CDU man Günther. The sixty-two year old has earned a lot of recognition. However, so far it has not attracted attention because it has pushed itself into the spotlight, as is necessary in election campaigns. But the Greens also put Aminata Touré by her side on Saturday and voted for second place on the list. The 29-year-old Touré has already attracted nationwide attention: she was the first black woman to become a member of the Kiel parliament and has been the vice-president of the state parliament since 2019. Another, who had taken over the Ministry of Agriculture from Robert Habeck as a young hope in 2018, is already moving on:Jan Philipp Albrecht is now to become the co-chair of the party-affiliated Heinrich Böll Foundation.

The Greens are self-confident. Climate protection should become a "boss issue". The Jamaica coalition is still working properly, and the FDP will also play an important role after the election. The fact that the Greens can imagine something else, however, always shows when you look at Berlin: when Touré raves about the traffic light treaty as a "liberation" or when Heinold says they want to support the upswing from Berlin in the Federal Council, that is what will be measured with whom to rule in the future. Günther should feel addressed by Touré's comment that one observes time and again that conservative prime ministers are considered more liberal than they are, or at least their party.

But the SPD top candidate Thomas Losse-Müller can also feel welcomed - without his name having been mentioned.

But when Heinold says: “My party membership is and will remain green”, one has to think of him: after all, Losse-Müller was once greener and her state secretary.

Now he wants to win with the SPD, the relationship with his old boss is strained.

At least the last survey saw the SPD ahead with 28 percent, the CDU with 21 percent and the Greens at 18. Heinold and Touré were elected on Saturday with 93 and 84 percent of the delegate's votes.

In the spring, a presence party conference has to confirm the list.