Alliance 90/The Greens ( ), often simply referred to as Greens ( ), is a green political party in Germany. It was formed in 1993 by the merger of the Greens (formed in West Germany in 1980) and Alliance 90 (formed in East Germany in 1990). The Greens had itself merged with the East German Green Party after German reunification in 1990.
Since November 2024, Franziska Brantner and Felix Banaszak have been co-leaders of the party. It currently holds 85 of the 630 seats in the Bundestag, having won 11% of first votes and 11.6% of second votes cast in the 2025 federal election, putting it in fourth place of the seven political parties by number of seats. Its parliamentary co-leaders are Britta Haßelmann and Katharina Dröge. The Greens have been part of the federal government twice: first as a junior partner to the Social Democrats (SPD) from 1998 to 2005, and then with the SPD and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the traffic light coalition from the 2021 election until that coalition's collapse in 2024. In the Scholz cabinet, the Greens had five ministers, including Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
The party holds seats in most of Germany's state legislatures, except Saarland, Thuringia and Brandenburg, and is a member of coalition governments in seven states. Cem Özdemir, Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, is the only Green head of government in Germany. The Landtag of Baden-Württemberg is also the only state legislature in which Alliance 90/The Greens is the largest party; it is the second largest party in the legislatures of Berlin, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein.
Alliance 90/The Greens is a founding member of the European Green Party and the Greens–European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament. It is currently the largest party in the G/EFA group, with 12 MEPs. In the 2019 European election, Alliance 90/The Greens was the second largest party in Germany, winning 20.5% of votes cast. The party had 166,000 members in February 2025, making it the third largest party in Germany by membership.
History
Background The Green Party was initially founded in West Germany as Die Grünen (the Greens) in January 1980. It grew out of the anti-nuclear energy, environmental, peace, new left, and new social movements of the late 20th century. More specifically, social and political movements that contributed to the milieu that produced the Greens included protests during the 1970s against Wyhl and Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plants, the nuclear waste processing facility at Gorleben and the construction of a new runway at Frankfurt Airport, and the grassroots civic Citizens' Initiative movement. Alternative left groups that flourished after the SPD abandoned Marxism, entered a grand coalition with the CDU/CSU under Christian Democratic chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, and later banned radical activists from being employed as civil servants, also formed a movement that contributed to the party's formation, including the Außerparlamentarische Opposition, the West German student movement, the K-Groups and the Spontis, as did a broader alternative subculture that included collectives, cooperatives, communes, self-help groups, new religious movements and cultural organisations.
Between 1977 and 1979 local parties running on on environmental and peace issues were established across West Germany. Although most environmental and anti-nuclear activists were initially sceptical of these efforts, a lack of results from pressure group activity and early electoral successes meant the approach gained momentum and led to local groups amalgamating into state-level parties.
Grüne Liste Umweltschutz (GLU - green list for environmental protection) was the name used for some branches in Lower Saxony and other states in the Federal Republic of Germany, including Hamburg, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg. These groups were founded in 1977 and took part in several elections. Most GLU activists had been involved in environmental protection activism, although it increasingly also attracted campaigners on social issues. Most GLU branches merged with The Greens in 1980.
The West Berlin state branch of The Greens was founded as Alternative Liste, or precisely, Alternative Liste für Demokratie und Umweltschutz (AL; alternative list for democracy and environmental protection) in 1978 and became the official West Berlin branch of The Greens in 1980. In 1993, it renamed to Alliance 90/The Greens Berlin after the merger with East Berlin's Greens and Alliance 90.
The Hamburg state branch of the Green Party was called Grün-Alternative Liste Hamburg (GAL; green-alternative list) from its foundation in 1982 until 2012. In 1984, it became the official Hamburg branch of The Greens.
In July 1978 former Christian Democrat Herbert Gruhl founded Grüne Aktion Zukunft (GAZ - green action future) as the beginning of a process to establish a nationwide green party. Among the groups expressing interest in this were the Bundesverband Bürgerinitiativen Umweltschutz (BBU - federal association of citizen's initiatives for environmental protection), a movement of citizen's initiative groups focused on anti-nuclear and environmental issues, members of the anthroposophy movement, the Free International University, Spontis and disaffected Social Democrats.
In February 1979 an electoral alliance was established to contest the first democratic elections to the European Parliament later that year under the name Sonstige Politische Vereinigung Die Grünen (SPV-Die Grünen - alternative political alliance, the greens). This included GAZ, GLU, Grüne Liste Schleswig-Holstein and the Action Group of Independent Germans (a pro-neutrality pacifist political party which had adopted pro-environment policies in the 1970s and was predominantly present in southern Germany). Two members of the BBU's executive, Petra Kelly and Roland Vogt, also joined the alliance, and it was also supported by prominent writer Heinrich Böll and socialist activist Rudi Dutschke. However, not all local green groups supported the coalition, including the West Berlin Alternative Liste and the Bunte Liste (Multicoloured List) in Hamburg, the latter being a rival green party to the city's GLU branch. Both of these lists were heavily influenced by the activism of the Communist League. SPV-Die Grünen ran on a platform advocating a nuclear-free Europe and a Europe of the Regions, and scored 3.2 percent of the vote.
As German electoral law provided for a generous scheme for reimbursement of election expenses, providing them to all parties scoring at least 0.5 percent of the vote, the new formation netted 4.8 million deutschmarks, after spending just 300,000 on its campaign. This money was spent on establishing state and national party infrastructure. SPV-Die Grünen's success led to increased activist interest, with membership rising to around 10,000 by the end of 1979, and the Alternative and Multicoloured Lists showing more interest in joining forces with the other green groups.
A congress in October 1979 to agree a programme for the national party led to heated disagreements over economic orientation and non-violence and whether dual membership with other parties was to be permitted. Whilst the latter was resolved by agreeing to devolve decisions on membership to local branches, the former was overcome by the adoption of what would become known as the four pillars of green politics: ecology, social responsibility, grassroots democracy and non-violence. Journalist and activist August Haußleiter claimed to have proposed these and secured the agreement of the leaders of the right (Gruhl) and left (Jürgen Reents) factions at the conference. The nascent movement received a further boost the same month when the Bremer Grüne Liste became the first green party to win seats in a state parliament, securing four seats in Bremen's election.
12–13 January 1980: Foundation congress The political party The Greens () sprung out of the wave of New Social Movements that were active in the 1970s, including environmentalist, anti-war, and anti-nuclear movements which can trace their origin to the student protests of 1968. Officially founded as a German national party on 13 January 1980 in Karlsruhe, the party sought to give these movements political and parliamentary representation, as the pre-existing people's parties were not organised in a way to address their stated issues. Its membership included organisers from former attempts to achieve institutional representation such as and AUD. Opposition to pollution, use of nuclear power, NATO military action, and certain aspects of industrialised society were principal campaign issues. The party also championed sexual liberation and some of their members supported the abolition of age-of-consent laws.
The formation of a party was purportedly first discussed by movement leaders in 1978. Important figures in the first years were – among others – Petra Kelly, Joschka Fischer, Gert Bastian, , Rudolf Bahro, Joseph Beuys, Antje Vollmer, , August Haußleiter, Luise Rinser, , Christian Ströbele, Jutta Ditfurth, Baldur Springmann and Werner Vogel.
In the foundational congress of 1980, the ideological tenets of the party were consolidated, proclaiming the famous Four Pillars of the Green Party: Social justice Ecological wisdom Grassroots democracy Nonviolence
1980s: Parliamentary representation on the federal level As the 1980s commenced, the movement built on their success in the 1979 Bremen state elections, winning six seats in the 1980 Baden-Württemberg state election and nine seats in the 1981 West Berlin state election, although the result in the 1980 West German federal election was disappointing, with only 1.5 percent of the vote scored. In 1982, the conservative factions of the Greens broke away to form the Ecological Democratic Party (ÖDP). Those who remained in the Green party were more strongly pacifist and against restrictions on immigration and reproductive rights, while supporting the legalisation of cannabis use, placing a higher priority on working for LGBT rights, and tending to advocate what they described as "anti-authoritarian" concepts of education and child-rearing. They also tended to identify more closely with a culture of protest and civil disobedience, frequently clashing with police at demonstrations against nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, and the construction of a new runway () at Frankfurt Airport. Those who left the party at the time might have felt similarly about some of these issues, but did not identify with the forms of protest that Green party members took part in.
After some success at state-level elections, winning 11 seats in Lower Saxony, nine seats in Hesse and eight seats in Hamburg during the course of 1982, the party won 27 seats (plus one non-voting delegate from West Berlin) with of the vote in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, in the 1983 federal election. Among the important political issues at the time was the deployment of Pershing II IRBMs and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles by the U.S. and NATO on West German soil, generating strong opposition in the general population that found an outlet in mass demonstrations. The newly formed party was able to draw on this popular movement to recruit support.