After eleven years of political work in the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament, the Green MP Andreas Hartenfels left the party and parliamentary group. The 56-year-old justified his decision on Thursday in Mainz with the resolutions of the most recent federal party conference on the war in Ukraine. The Greens had thus said goodbye to their “previous understanding as a peace party”. Hartenfels told the German Press Agency: “In the future, as a non-attached member of parliament, I will fulfill my mandate in the state parliament and continue to work for my constituency.”
“I very much regret this step,” said Greens parliamentary group leader Bernhard Braun. “He was the central contact for environmental, nature conservation and climate policy in the parliamentary group.” Andreas Hartenfels has always made politics out of conviction. State chairwoman Natalie Cramme-Hill also expressed regret, but also spoke of “mutual alienation”. She called on Hartenfels to resign his mandate so that “this state parliament mandate is filled in the sense of the election”.
The Greens in the Mainz state parliament now only have nine instead of the previous ten MPs, but remain the third-largest group. The majority of the traffic light decreases to 54 of the 101 deputies. The Greens will elect a new parliamentary group chair on January 11th. The candidate for Braun’s successor is Parliamentary Secretary Pia Schellhammer.
Hartenfels joined the Greens in 1984 and was elected to the state parliament in 2011 as a candidate in the West Palatinate district of Kusel. “Leaving my own pack is not easy for me,” said Hartenfels, using nature conservation language. The Greens’ approval of the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine is not a topic of state politics, but “an essential part of the political space in which we all move”.
In the traffic light government in the federal government, the Greens are “rather the hawks and not those who act moderately and thoughtfully,” criticized Hartenfels. “In order to end this slaughter, we need fewer weapons and finally mechanisms for peaceful conflict resolution.” At the party conference, which he watched livestream in mid-October, he experienced war rhetoric and demonstrative unity, which he found highly inappropriate on this sensitive topic have felt. On the other hand, before the decision to go to war in Kosovo in 1998, the party was still struggling intensively. In the meantime, black-and-white thinking has become entrenched, leaving no room for the search for good political solutions.
The 56-year-old politician resigned as chairman of his parliamentary group in the Kusel district council last year after he had met with opposition with his position on Corona policy. With his negative attitude to facility-related vaccination, Hartenfels was also not in line with the majority of the parliamentary group.
Hartenfels also criticized the decision to continue operating nuclear power plants. He announced that he wanted to continue to get involved in the state parliament and to stand up for the interests of his district. “I can now speak more freely about climate protection and put more pressure on the government,” said Hartenfels, adding: “I’m a thoroughly political person, I don’t want to disappear from the stage.”
