Overview

• Robert Habeck confirmed he has given up his Bundestag seat and stepped back from active politics after the Greens’ 11.6% election result.
• Habeck argued in a farewell interview that Germany may lack a coherent middle, criticized parliamentary oversight as a distortion, and attacked Markus Söder and Bundestag President Julia Klöckner with sharp language.
• Greens parliamentary leader Katharina Dröge publicly contradicted Habeck, calling the 'Merkel gap' idea 'unsinn' and insisting a societal center exists that the party should defend.
• Dröge outlined a strategy centered on a 'left middle,' citing higher taxes on the wealthy to fund childcare as an example of policies she believes a majority would back.
• Habeck said he will take guest academic roles in Copenhagen at the Danish Institute for International Studies and then at Berkeley, as commentators cast his departure as a reckoning for the Greens’ recent strategy.