Overview
- The Green parliamentary co-leaders Katharina Dröge and Britta Haßelmann set out their critique in a five-page 'Impulspapier' published on Saturday, October 3, 2026, and called for a change of course after saying past efforts to counter the AfD have fallen short.
- The paper assigns responsibility for the AfD's rise to all democratic parties, including the Greens, and warns against continuing the same tactics without new action.
- Dröge and Haßelmann argue that appeals to 'saving democracy' now sound abstract to many voters and that the Greens increasingly appear to defend a status quo that does not work in everyday life.
- They call for tangible, everyday policy measures targeted at structurally weak regions where people feel forgotten and where right‑wing populist promises find the most resonance.
- The public reporting of the internal paper has already prompted debate inside the party and could push other mainstream parties to propose concrete local measures, although no specific policy package has been announced yet.