The narrow victory in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg on March 8 was a liberation for the battered ecologist Green Party. With around 180,000 members, the German Greens are one of the biggest parties in the green movement worldwide, but they had lost nine elections in the past three and a half years, both at the federal and state levels.

Last year's federal election was a particularly bitter blow: Only 11.6% of voters chose the traditionally environmentalist party, down from close to 15% in 2021. After the Greens governed the country since 2021 together with the center-left Social Democrats and the neoliberal Free Democrats under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Greens found themselves once again on the hard opposition benches as Friedrich Merz, of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) became chancellor in May 2025.

The Greens also lost their prominent leaders: Former Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck withdrew from active politics, as did the former Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who moved to New York to work for the United Nations. The party they left behind was searching for a new direction.

Search for the right strategy

Now comes the triumph of Cem Özdemir, a Green Party veteran and former agriculture minister in Scholz's national government, in the affluent state of Baden-Württemberg. Britta Haßelmann, the party's parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, summed up what she felt it meant in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung: "The Greens can win elections again. And we are needed!"

The Greens had lost some of the feeling of being needed after the general election. A period of introversion followed: Should the party sharpen its profile with more left-wing demands and a clear emphasis on its core brand or climate protection? Or should it — as Habeck and Baerbock had already done — shift towards the center of society?

Özdemir decided this question in his own way: He focused entirely on himself and his popularity in Baden-Württemberg, the state where he was born to Turkish immigrants 60 years ago. The word "Greens" did not appear on his election posters at all — his party was represented by a small sunflower logo. He refrained from making overly provocative climate protection demands.

The Greens will now have to form a coalition with the CDU in the state, a continuation of the state's previous coalition. But among the Greens on the national level and among lawmakers in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, Özdemir's political course has not been universally well-received. The ever-rebellious youth organization "Grüne Jugend," the Greens' youth organization, welcomed the election winner from its own ranks with a statement that read: "Election victories are worthless if they do not ensure that people get a state government that pursues clearly recognizable social policies."

That did not sound like an enthusiastic endorsement. For her part, Haßelmann also expressed some scepticism about Özdemir's approach: "A strategy from Baden-Württemberg cannot be transferred one-to-one to other states like North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin, or Rhineland-Palatinate," she said. "The goals are too different for that."

There are more state elections coming up. The state of Rhineland-Palatinate will elect a new parliament on March 22, where the Greens have been governing alongside the SPD and the FDP. And Berlin will go to the polls on September 22.

Center or left-of-center?

But Özdemir also has advocates in Berlin. The influential vice president of the Bundestag and former Green Party leader, Omid Nouripour, called his party colleague's election victory "a blueprint for how the Greens can once again become capable of winning a broader majority nationwide."

In an interview with the RND news network, Nouripour said of Özdemir: "He shows that Green politics can win majorities if it listens to the people, focuses on their reality and claims its place in the center of society."

This is likely to be the subject of debate within the Green Party over the coming months: Is there a place for the formerly oppositional, rebellious party in the center of society? Or should the Greens shift to the left in order to facilitate coalitions with the Social Democrats and the Left Party, for example?

Environmental issues or economic questions

Özdemir has answered this question for himself: He wants to score points with voters in the center of society. According to election researcher Roberto Heinrich from the opinion research institute infratest-dimap, his name recognition will help him do so.

Heinrich told DW before the election: "This could help the Greens to assert themselves in a rather unfavorable environment for them, in which environmental issues are losing importance and economic issues are coming to the fore."

But not every state has a Green Party figure of Özdemir's stature. The struggle to find the right course is likely to continue to occupy the Greens.

This article was originally written in German.

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