Last speech in the Bundestag: Baerbock is recognized across the party to say goodbye

Annalena Baerbock has worshiped the big farewell. At the summer festival of the Green Group on Tuesday evening in Berlin-Treptow with 800 guests, the former Foreign Minister did not explicitly not appreciated the two group leader. Katharina Dröge still thanked Baerbock from the stage. Just a short thank you, but her words went under in a loud applause.

The 44-year-old is almost unnoticed by the Bundestag for the general public this Friday. After twelve years as a parliamentarian, including five years as Greens chair and three and a half as the top diplomat in the country, Baerbock moves on to New York. From September she will lead the United Nations General Assembly there.

One last time Baerbock will speak as a speaker for her faction on Friday. In a debate on the financing of non -governmental organizations – the application comes from the AfD – she will be the only speaker of the Greens. She will get around ten minutes of speaking time, presumably she will not only speak on the subject.

With Habeck she changed the Greens

For the Greens, part of the era ends, which Baerbock shaped together with Robert Habeck. Together they moved the party in the middle, provided a member boom and led the Greens to the government. But Baerbock is also connected to the party’s crash. The Greens recently lost numerous elections and their image as the country’s favorite party. Baerbock also increasingly polarized as Foreign Minister.

To her farewell, Baerbock still experiences cross -party appreciation. “Baerbock has set essential accents and caused a rethink in the previously social democratic foreign and security policy that combines soft and hard power combined into smart power,” said CDU foreign politician Roderich Kiesewetter.

She brought in geostrategic thinking that not only pays attention to interests, but also the central values, continued Kiesewetter. He is convinced that Baerbock leaves a foreign policy inheritance: “In any case, her statement will remain that diplomacy will only be effective in terms of foreign policy if it is connected to hardness,” Kiesewetter told Tagesspiegel.

Exactly for this hardship – their use of weapons to Ukraine or the statement that the Chinese president was a dictator – Baerbock was repeatedly clashed with the SPD and the former Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

One of her toughest critics, the SPD partyinke Ralf Stegner, still appreciates Baerbock to say goodbye: “We were not of an opinion in every point, but Annalena Baerbock led the external office with great commitment and passion during a time,” Stegner told the Tagesspiegel. He wishes her “from the heart” all the best for the task of the United Nations.

And also Robert Habeck, with whom she competed for a long time and whom she ended with the candidate for chancellor in 2021, finds friendly words to say goodbye: “If I only have to choose a word that Annalena describes, it would be fearlessness. And in a world we need it.”