Habeck at the Green Party Congress: "Compromises are the art of politics"

Robert Habeck is no stranger to pathos, but he didn't want to know anything about the "end of an era".

"A new act is beginning," said the party chairman when he appeared in front of the cameras on Friday evening together with Annalena Baerbock in the Berlin Velodrom.

The Greens are holding their party conference - the motto is "Roots for the Future" - again digitally because of the pandemic.

It is the last joint appearance of the two chairmen, on Saturday a new party executive will be elected.

The green statute does not permanently allow members of the government to also lead the party.

It is considered certain that Omid Nouripour and Ricarda Lang will succeed the outgoing chairmen.

Helen Bubrowski

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Habeck explained what constitutes the new act, he is preparing his party to participate in the government.

"Compromise is not saying goodbye to one's own ideals," he said. "Compromises are the art of politics." A party is not an end in itself, the purpose is to shape reality. It's good that the Greens are influencing this "That's why we went into government. And you shouldn't complain about it. You should be proud of it."

Much resentment because of the KfW decision

Habeck spoke about the taxonomy, which is painful for Greens: “The EU Commission has proposed that nuclear energy can be classified as sustainable in the information on the classification of financial products.

Does anyone think the world would be better if another party dealt with it?” was Habeck's rhetorical question.

It is good that the Greens can exert influence here.

When it came to stopping KfW funding for energy-efficient buildings, Habeck switched from the role of party leader to that of economics minister: He defended the decision, which had met with much resentment. The surprising end of the funding was a "hard cut", he could understand the anger of many people. But the program went completely out of control. "It's uncomfortable to have these debates, but that's why I became a minister."

Annalena Baerbock also spoke of her new role as Foreign Minister.

Foreign policy cannot be separated from security policy and climate policy, she said, and the climate issue is always a strategic issue.

The Federal Foreign Office is now also responsible for climate foreign policy, and Baerbock will be going to international climate summits in the future.

It is important to dovetail issues of climate and security policy in the new government.

Baerbock: "We stand with Ukraine"

Baerbock spoke about the Ukraine conflict - a topic that the federal executive committee had not put on the agenda of the party congress. There is only one motion that states that the "concerns of the Russian leadership" must also be taken seriously. Although the Foreign Minister rejected Ukraine's request for arms deliveries from Germany, on Friday evening she again emphasized: "We stand with Ukraine on security and defense, but above all on the issue of maintaining economic stability."

Claudia Roth, the new Minister of State for Culture, held the eulogy for Baerbock, who had tears in his eyes.

Earlier she had emphasized the value of friction and debate.

"If you really want to change something, you have to be ready to argue." That will probably happen at this party conference.

But in fact there was no more argument on Friday evening.

Only the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, recalled the unsuccessful election campaign, saying that the Greens had "made themselves small".

Kretschmann called on the party to "learn from the mistakes" - even if that means "not becoming employee of the month".

"We have to balance our message of change even more with messages of security," demanded the Prime Minister.

On the other hand, only cautious criticism came from the grassroots members.

A woman from Baden-Württemberg wished that the next election campaign would be realistic.

Someone called for a German No to the taxonomy (which probably won't exist, but which wouldn't change anything), a woman from Hamburg campaigned for international pacifism.

Cem Özdemir, the new Minister of Agriculture, and Steffi Lemke, the Minister for the Environment, presented their projects.

The state chairmen had recorded videos, they were on the level of bad Instagram spots.

In between, moderators spoke up, who were apparently supposed to give the party conference a show character.

A real argument would have been very refreshing.