When German police and the foreign ministry warned of possible interference in Sunday’s federal election, most people thought of troll farms, social media bots and online disinformation campaigns.
No one expected freelance “false flag” operations aimed at the Greens.
In the last weeks, at least 270 motorists around the country have discovered building insulation foam stuffed in their exhaust pipes alongside bumper stickers with the slogan “Go Greener” and a picture of a grinning Robert Habeck, the ecological party’s lead election candidate.
After a high-profile series of incidents in southern Germany, three men were detained near Berlin Airport and questioned. One of suspects has reportedly said they were promised €100 for every tagged car in an operation prosecutors have linked to Russian agents.
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It’s not the only election mystery surrounding Germany’s Greens.
Another is why, after three years in a highly unpopular Berlin coalition, support for the party has remained steady on around 15 per cent. And this after a historic 2022 pivot for the one-time pacifist party towards military aid for Ukraine – and an election campaign with almost no focus on climate issues.
Habeck, the face of these challenges and contradictions, is federal economics minister in the outgoing coalition. For three years he has presided over an economy in recession while images of his high-risk, high-speed pivot away from Russian gas – including begging missions for natural gas contracts to the Middle East, will follow him to his grave.
Despite his extremely pragmatic understanding of Green politics, party delegates overwhelmingly backed Habeck as their lead candidate last November.
On the campaign trail, the Lübeck-born politician presents himself as an anti-politician who is capable of using regular language to explain political concepts for centrist voters, struggling with Germany’s growing political polarisation.
His Greens, Habeck said last year, “are a party from the centre that aren’t leaving empty the vacuum left by Angela Merkel – but filling it”.
The Green politician has had a bumpy road in recent months, his communication skills no match for an onslaught of online hate that has seen him file hundreds of legal complaints with police.
“The traffic light coalition [so named after the governing parties’ traditional colours] was not a laugh a minute either,” Habeck admitted on the campaign trail, citing vicious fiscal feuds with former finance minister Christian Lindner of the liberal Free Democrats.
He had thwarted Habeck’s ambitious climate plans, including repurposing €57 billion in unused pandemic funding for climate transformation projects.
The Green economic minister conceded it “really hurt” to agree to cutbacks in subsidy programmes for e-mobility, housing insulation and solar panels.
Perhaps the greatest journey the Greens have had in power is their shift from their pacifist roots to Ukraine war allies in Berlin.
Now the Green leader has warned of an “imperialist” carve-up of the country at the hands of the US and Russia.
“Basically ... this is what Britain and France did 100 years ago when they divided the Arab world or Africa with straight lines – without asking the people,” he warned on Thursday.
Habeck remains Germany’s most outspoken proponent of greater European integration, criticising the European Council – where EU leaders meet – as a modern equivalent of a medieval “council of electors”. If the EU is to survive in the future, he thinks, member states must agree “a genuine European republican constitution within the next 10 years”.
Despite the dramas of office, polls suggest the German Greens, unlike their Irish colleagues, have emerged largely unscathed from power.
Despite a modest record on climate measures, the Greens still face sustained fire for pushing an “eco-dictatorship” on Germans, a charge led by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Its lead candidate, Alice Weidel, has warned of a “green transformation into the abyss”, tapping into public frustration over identity politics and a fumbled home heating plan.
Equally critical of the Greens is the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian ally of the poll-topping Christian Democratic Union. CDU leader Friedrich Merz hit back at CSU swipes at the Greens in order to keep his coalition options open, warning that “no one tells me what to do”.
That prompted encouraging noises from Green Party foreign minister Annalena Baerbock about a CDU-Green alliance, which would be a first at federal level.
“As democratic parties, we must always find the strength to stay in conversation with each other,” she said on Wednesday. “The dividing line of our society runs between those who stand with both feet on the foundation of the postwar Basic Law and those who want to destroy this Basic Law – our constitution – and thus our peaceful coexistence.”
Even if the votes – and the Bavarians – allow for an alliance, senior Greens such as Baerbock and Habeck will have a final challenge to sell such an alliance to their grassroots party members.
They protested loudly when a series of violent attacks, for which asylum seekers were the suspects, prompted a hardline CDU/CSU migration motion in the Bundestag, backed with AfD support. In response Habeck, ever the realist, faced down Green outrage to present his own proposals to accelerate asylum procedures and step up enforcement of arrest warrants.
“This is not the answer to Merz,” Habeck said, “but the answer to the security problem, which was recognisable to everyone after the [recent] murders.”
