Three prominent party members are set to lead Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) on an interim basis following the resignation of its leader.
Andrea Nahles, who was in office for just over a year, stepped down from the SPD’s leadership on Sunday in the wake of disastrous showings in the European Parliament election and a regional vote in Bremen last month.
On Monday, German newswire DPA reported that the SPD’s inner circle had nominated three politicians as provisional leaders until the next party conference, which is currently scheduled for December but could be brought forward.
The trio includes two women: Manuela Schwesig, currently state premier of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and a former family affairs minister, and Malu Dreyer, state premier of Rhineland-Palatinate. They will be joined by Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, leader of the SPD in the Hesse state parliament, where the party is in the opposition.
Rolf Mützenich was proposed as provisional leader of the Social Democrats’ parliamentary group. He currently serves as the group’s deputy leader.
The party’s executive board, which is currently meeting in Berlin, and the nominees themselves have yet to accept the proposal. A formal announcement is expected at a press conference on Monday afternoon.
The SPD — which governs in a coalition together with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats — has been in steady decline for years, scoring its weakest national election result since 1993 in the last German general election in 2017.
But in late May, it suffered a double blow that underscored just how far the party had fallen. The SPD secured just 15.8 percent of the vote in last month’s European Parliament election, coming in a distant third to the Christian Democrats and the Greens.
On the same day as the European vote, the party lost the city state of Bremen, a Social Democrat stronghold where it had held control for nearly 74 years.
Discontent over the May election results had prompted Nahles to call a vote on Tuesday this week to determine whether she should continue to lead the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
She then preempted that vote with her resignation announcement in which she said she would quit the party leadership on Monday morning and the parliamentary group leadership on Tuesday.
“I have just said goodbye to the party executives,” Nahles told reporters upon leaving the party’s Berlin headquarters on Monday morning, adding: “I have resigned.”