A quite expected earthquake has affected the German party and political landscape: co-chairs of the Green Party (part of the ruling tripartite coalition) Ricarda Lang and Omid Nuripur have announced decision to resign along with the entire board. This should happen ahead of the all-German party congress due on November 15 to 17. Tellingly, the move did not come as a surprise to anyone in that country, even inside the party itself, because in the latest Landtag elections across East Germany, the greens were suffering failure after failure: in Saxony they barely overcame the lower bar for entering the local parliament with 5.1 percent of the vote, while not even gaining the required minimum in both Brandenburg and Thuringia, having been left behind in both. Meanwhile, the Greens from other federal states of the country have immediately responded to their party board’s decision to resign with a flow of statements endorsing the "brave and honest" move by Ricarda Lang and Omid Nuripura.

Among other things, these statements "from the field" feature talk about the emerging chances to find a way out of the current intraparty crisis. Thus, its leader in Bavaria, Gisela Sengl, is confident that "during the November congress, the party will rebuild itself and start preparing with renewed vigor for the federal elections to the Bundestag" that are scheduled for September 2025. The resignation of leaders "indicates that the board has taken responsibility" for the party crisis, she said. And the "green" Minister of Economy of North Rhine-Westphalia, Mona Neubaur, pointed out that such a step "deserves great respect, testifying to their awareness of responsibility for the fate of the party."

Amid the German opposition, there is a totally different assessment of what has just happened. "The problem is not the co-chairs or the Green Party’s federal board, but its presence in the government coalition," which also includes the SPD and the Free Democrats (FDP), points out leader of the CDU/CSU Bundestag faction Alexander Dobrindt. According to him, "this ‘traffic light’ is falling apart as the red-green-yellow cabinet has faced a domino effect, with new resignations inevitable." By the way, the latest opinion polls show that nationwide popularity of the "greens" has dropped to 9.5 percent, and the last seven years have not seen it below the ten percent bar.

Bavarian CSU chairman Markus Söder also took on the rebound of the Greens to attack Olaf Scholz’s government which comprises six “green ministers” at once. After the reported impending resignation of the party board, Söder demanded the ousting of "green" Economy Minister Robert Habeck, accusing him of "personal responsibility for the economic crisis in Germany." Another one to have been caught in the crossfire along with Habeck is the "green" Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock.

"If the Green Party co-chairs themselves have begun voicing the need to start all over again and let new faces into politics, it is of course necessary to get rid of those in the government who have become a symbol of calloused migration and economic policy — Baerbock and Habeck," head of the CDU/CSU faction in the Bundestag Thorsten Frei said, for one. What is absolutely clear is that the CDU/CSU not only seeks to knock out the dominant yet most odious (as deemed by the public) ministers from the sitting government, but simply put, to bring down Olaf Scholz and his "traffic light" cabinet, pushing for an early election amid lower public support for the SPD, the Greens and the Free Democrats. CDU Secretary General Carsten Linnemann put it baldly in this respect: "The country will not endure another year under the current ruling coalition. I am convinced there is no alternative but an early election."

Neither is there one for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in the current circumstances. All he can do is whistle past the graveyard. Therefore, when commenting on a coalition party crisis, he has declared that "Green Party board resignation is not going to affect government activities one way or the other", or that he cooperated "closely and in an atmosphere of full trust" with Ricarda Lang and Omid Nuripuri, or that he sincerely regrets their resignation but deems it as "a normal phenomenon for democratic processes." Anyways, this is German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit has formulated his boss’s stance, concluding that "the coalition will not be affected."

However, given the noticeable decline of trust in their chancellor among both the German people and the SPD itself, after a while Olaf Scholz will likely follow the steps of Joe Biden (who quit the race, backing Kamala Harris as a presidential hopeful) and suggest the country’s most popular Social Democrat as leader of his party in the upcoming 2025 Bundestag elections — Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. After all, it is already clear that Scholz's chances would be slim up against CDU head Friedrich Merz in the upcoming race for the German Chancellor.