The new German Parliament has rejuvenated and this should be reflected in the political balances. The average age of deputies elected on Sunday, September 26 is now 47.5 years old, two years younger than at the start of the last legislature, and 25% of deputies are under 40, compared to 18% in the outgoing assembly. Since 1980, this average age has never been so low. The differences between the groups are considerable. It is at Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, far right) that the average age is highest (51.2 years), and it is also the honorary president of the party, Alexander Gauland, 80 years old. , who is the dean of the new Bundestag.
Conversely, the two youngest MPs are Greens: Milla Fester and Niklas Wagener, both 23 years old. The environmental group is the one with the lowest average age: 42.6 years. The one, too, who has rejuvenated the most, with the SPD group, since both have seen the average age of their members drop by about five years between the last legislature and the current one. Voters under 30 logically placed the environmental movement in the lead (22%), ahead of the liberals of the FDP (20%) and the social democrats of the SPD (17%).
Deputies reputed to be very left
Within the Social Democratic group – now the most numerous in the Bundestag, with 206 members out of 735 – the entry into force of a new generation is moreover quite spectacular. In total, 49 SPD deputies are thus members of Jusos (“Socialist Youth”), almost a quarter of the group, never seen before. Among them are in particular their current president, Jessica Rosenthal, and her very media predecessor, Kevin Kühnert, who had fought against the renewal of the “grand coalition”, in 2017, and against the election of Olaf Scholz as president of the party. , in 2019. Since then, the Jusos have calmed down. They were even particularly loyal throughout the campaign, playing the perfect little soldiers in the service of the candidacy of Olaf Scholz.
Will it last? According to many observers, the probable future chancellor will have to show a lot of tact vis-à-vis these young SPD deputies, known to be very left-wing, and this from the next few weeks devoted to the drafting of a coalition contract. Especially since these 49 Jusos have their counterpart among the Greens, of which 26 of the 118 deputies also belong to the party’s youth organization, which is also much more radical than the leadership of the environmental movement. If today they symbolize a certain generational renewal, these some 75 young SPD and Green MPs represent a pole of potential “rebels” with which Olaf Scholz, if elected chancellor, will necessarily have to deal.
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