Greens politician Franziska Brantner has attacked CDU leader Friedrich Merz and the SPD for lacking leadership. At the party congress in Thuringia, she accused both parties of avoiding tough decisions, especially regarding conscription. She compared Merz's behavior to that of former Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
At the party congress of the Greens' Thuringia state association in Erfurt, federal chairwoman Franziska Brantner sharply criticized the leadership of CDU leader and Chancellor Friedrich Merz as well as the SPD. She accused both parties of shying away from difficult decisions, particularly evident in the debate on the future of conscription.
The background is the ongoing discussion on conscription reform. Recently, CDU and SPD in the federal government considered using a lottery to determine who should serve in the Bundeswehr if there are too few volunteers. Brantner sees this as a lack of decisiveness: "If men don't want to make unpopular decisions, you end up with the lottery," she said. The federal government wanted to present a compromise last week but canceled the press conference at short notice. Previously, SPD and Union policy experts had agreed on the lottery procedure, but it met resistance in the SPD parliamentary group, especially from Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. The first consultations thus started without a common concept.
Brantner personally attacked Merz and compared him to Olaf Scholz: "He is Chancellor, and he scholzes," she said, alluding to Scholz's alleged hesitancy. She also sees parallels in foreign and budget policy: The government under Merz provides too little money for Ukraine support, in her view.
Regarding the black-red coalition, Brantner warned of deep rifts. After less than a year, the coalition appears more fractured than the previous traffic-light government at the end of its term. Tensions are also visible on citizen's income.