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At the start of a three-day national party conference in the Bavarian city of Augsburg, activist Carola Rackete, a fierce migration advocate who has captained rescue ships in the Mediterranean, was elected as its top candidate for the 2024 European Parliament elections.
When it comes to procedural affairs in Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, the Left Party will be no more: On December 6, the socialists will no longer have enough lawmakers to constitute a parliamentary faction.They will be downgraded to “group.”
That is the result of the resignation of the party’s best-known member. Sahra Wagenknecht took nine of the party’s 38 Bundestag members out of the party. They have announced a new alliance, with more details to come next year.
The 28 remaining party MPs are too few to classify as a parliamentary faction. That means they lose certain rights, including committee participation and longer speaking times during debate.
Internal disagreement has bubbled for a long time, as had rumors that Wagenknecht would do what she has now gone through with. The biggest point of recent contention was migration. Wagenknecht and her allies wanted a more restrictive policy than the rest of the party.
“Better united with 28 than divided with 38,” Dietmar Bartsch, the outgoing leader of the faction, said.
Highs and lows
Die Linke, as Germany’s Left Party is called, has a long history of changing form. It was called the Party of Democratic Socialism until 2007, which grew out of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) that ruled communist East Germany until its collapse in 1990.
Bartsch sees the crisis as an opportunity, noting that the Left Party remains in three state governments including leading Thuringia, in eastern Germany.
“It is an opportunity for a new start. We must seize this opportunity with determination,” he said.
The goal of returning to full faction status in the Bundestag may be difficult, Antonios Souris, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University told DW.
“None of these are real centers of power from which you could set your own political course that would then also have the scope or appeal for convincing voters at a federal level,” he said, referring to the areas where the Left does still have hold power.
Greens stand for climate protection
The Left Party’s efforts to advocate for progressive policies put them in a tough spot, Souris said. Trying to advocate for climate change policy, for example, gets overshadowed by the Greens’ reputation as the environmentalist party.
“The effects of the war in Ukraine, housing and social policy are issues that are the Left’s bread and butter,” he said. Yet they have not profited from such issues becoming more urgent.
With Wagenknecht’s departure, the Left Party faces another hurdle: recognizable faces. Though she has said the aim of her new alliance is to rob the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) of support, it may end up stealing what few voters die Linke still has, as well. With the AfD surging in polls, it seems the far-right populists have successfully taken the protest vote away from the Left Party.
The eastern states of Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, where the AfD is particularly strong, all face elections in 2024. Between the AfD’s popularity and the potential power of Wagenknecht’s new organization, which some estimate at 20 percent, the Left Party faces a daunting electoral task.
What’s next for the Left Party?
On Ukraine, the party appears to be on both sides. It has condemned Russia’s war of aggression as “contrary to international law” and a “crime.” It has also called on the EU to turn towards diplomacy “instead of fueling escalation and a war of attrition.”
Hand-in-hand with that position, the Left Party has accused the EU of using the war as an opportunity to increase military budgets. In Germany, lawmakers approved borrowing 100 billion euros ($108 billion) to create a special fund for its armed forces.
The vote for the European Parliament will be the party’s next big test, but party leaders are already eyeing their next chance to improve at the national level. Germany will not vote for a new Bundestag until 2025.
Bartsch, despite his optimism, has acknowledged that parliamentary success will be “a Herculean task.”
This article was originally written in German.
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