Özdemir, Lang and Nouripour are staying: Influential Greens are opposing the party leadership and are not leaving X

During the day, numerous members of the Green Party, including party leaders Felix Banaszak and Franziska Brantner as well as the two parliamentary group leaders Katharina Dröge and Britta Haßelmann, joined the campaign. According to “Table Media”, the political director of the Green Party, Pegah Edalatian, is said to have initiated it.

The US billionaire Elon Musk bought the then internet service Twitter in October 2022 and later renamed it X. He specifically scaled back protective mechanisms against disinformation, according to his own statements with the aim of promoting “freedom of expression”.

Controversial debate in the Bundestag group

But internally there is also criticism of the approach, which was controversially discussed in the Bundestag group a few weeks ago. According to Tagesspiegel information, influential Greens, who many people follow on X, do not want to leave Musk’s platform.

Cem Özdemir, designated Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, as well as Bundestag Vice President Omid Nouripour and the former Green Party leader Ricarda Lang will remain on X. The deputy leader of the Green Party, Konstantin von Notz, also wants to stay on the platform.

Many Greens are critical of the fact that people unnecessarily deprive themselves of their own reach and only use their own social bubble on other platforms – such as Bluesky. “As a member of parliament, I don’t just want to move in my own filter bubble and also interact with people who contradict me and have completely different positions,” said Green MP Julian Joswig to the Tagesspiegel.

Although he regrets the development of the platform, it is still relevant. Joswig gave another reason for staying: “To be honest, I simply don’t want to leave social networks to the right-wing populists.”

Baden-Württemberg’s Finance Minister Danyal Bayaz made similar comments. “I respect every decision to leave

The decision is also controversial because the Greens actually recently decided to specifically address new groups of voters. After the disappointing European elections in 2024 and the loss of votes in the federal election in 2025, the party wanted to increase its presence on Tiktok in order to score points with younger voters – the Chinese company is also criticized for serious data protection concerns and a lack of youth protection.

Criticism also came from political competitors. “A politician who cannot tolerate harsh contradiction and discourse and prefers to lock himself in his own echo chamber has the wrong job,” said the chairman of the FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia, Henning Höne, who is running for the federal chairmanship of his party.

And former members of the Bundestag also criticized the move. “Withdrawal is the surrender of the sensible,” wrote ex-SPD MP Michael Roth on X. Long-time Green MP Volker Beck wrote: “This is already a shot in the foot.”