Green Party state conferences | Greens: Özdemir wants to play Kretschmann

The starting position could be better for Cem Özdemir . The former Federal Minister of Agriculture is popular in Baden-Württemberg, but whether that's enough to succeed Winfried Kretschmann as Minister-President next year remains to be seen, as the CDU is leading in the polls.

At least the Greens are backing Özdemir. At a state party conference in Heidenheim on Saturday, the 59-year-old received 97 percent of the votes as his candidate for state premier in the 2026 state elections. After Kretschmann's 15 years in office, the politician is expected to secure his party's power and become the second Green state premier in the history of the Federal Republic. Özdemir's rival for the office is the state chairman and parliamentary group leader of the CDU, Manuel Hagel. The 37-year-old was elected his party's top candidate a week earlier.

In the most recent poll by SWR and the "Stuttgarter Zeitung," the CDU received 31 percent, the AfD 19 percent. The Greens came in second with 20 percent, just ahead of the far right. However, if people could directly elect the head of government, Özdemir would win by a wide margin: According to a recent SWR poll, 39 percent of respondents want Özdemir as prime minister. Only 18 percent would vote for Hagel.

He did not want to succeed to the throne, Özdemir said in his candidacy speech. "I want to open a new chapter for Baden-Württemberg." In the election campaign, he stated, he wanted to demonstrate "a clear stance but also an outstretched hand." He did not want to "contribute to further dividing our region or turning people against each other." Kretschmann had previously praised his potential successor as down-to-earth, pragmatic, patriotic, and at the same time cosmopolitan. Özdemir was "made of prime ministerial cloth through and through."

In addition to Özdemir's election, the party conference in Heidenheim also addressed the preparation of a list for the state elections. However, due to a special Green Party rule, Özdemir is not ahead of the competition. Environment Minister Thekla Walker is expected to be in first place. This is due to the party's so-called women's statute. This stipulates that electoral lists must be at least half women, and that odd-numbered positions are reserved for women.

Meanwhile, the Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia have been preparing for the local elections in September at a state party conference in Cologne, which is taking place simultaneously. They aim to repeat their record result from 2020: Five years ago, the Greens achieved 20 percent of the vote in the council and district council elections in North Rhine-Westphalia and captured several town halls, including those in Bonn, Wuppertal, and Aachen.

Back then, the Greens were still making waves both at the state and national level – with climate protection, the transport transition, more space for bicycles, and cohesion in a cosmopolitan society. Five years later, the main issues are affordable housing and more funding for urgently needed infrastructure projects. Furthermore, the Greens were the first state branch of the party to call for a ban on the AfD. According to the state executive committee, this was intended to send a strong signal of "constitutional patriotic responsibility."

Under the motto "Home for 18 million," the 280 or so delegates advocated strengthening municipal housing associations, building more and more cheaply, and limiting short-term tourist rentals via platforms such as Airbnb in strained housing markets such as Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Münster.

"Rising rents have become one of the most pressing social issues of our time," said NRW state chairwoman Yazgülü Zeybek. The Greens are "currently the only party consistently addressing this problem," Zeybek said. She thus omitted the fact that affordable housing was the Left's top issue in the federal election campaign, and that the Left had also led the way with the "Rent Gouging App" and the demand for a nationwide rent cap.

To encourage municipal housing companies to build more again, the NRW Bank should be able to provide them with favorable loans, Zeybek said. Furthermore, the companies should have easier access to state-owned land. "We want to provide our cities and municipalities with pre-emption rights. The construction of affordable housing must always have priority from now on." But in order to build, municipalities first need money. Therefore, he demanded, the federal government must "finally free municipalities from their old debts."

Zeybek called on the federal government to use the €500 billion investment package to specifically support the conversion of vacant office and commercial space into residential housing. "And we want to make construction easier by reducing bureaucracy and lowering unnecessary building standards." Critics, however, accuse the Greens of contributing to the housing market crisis in North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the current and previous state governments.

All delegates in Cologne voted in favor of the urgent motion calling for a ban on the AfD, with one abstention. However, prior to the motion, the state's Justice Minister, Benjamin Limbach, who has been under fire for years, had caused controversy. He had publicly called for fairness in dealing with the AfD and opposed a general rejection of AfD members from chairing parliamentary committees. He argued that individual case reviews were necessary. Limbach also criticized the report by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which classified the AfD as "certainly right-wing extremist."

Even before the NRW party conference, however, he backtracked, emphasizing that members of right-wing extremist parties were unsuitable for office. Nevertheless, his statements at the party conference caused considerable discontent, especially among the Green Youth. With dpa