The Greens are perceived as an elite party, the parliamentary group leaders write self-critically in a paper.

The Green Party leadership wants to focus more on people's everyday problems. The Greens need to think about the pervasive distorted image of an elite party that is removed from everyday life, write parliamentary group leaders Britta Haßelmann and Katharina Dröge in an internal strategy paper. It is intended to serve as the basis for discussion at the parliamentary group executive committee's retreat early next week and is titled "A Look Back, a Look Forward!" The paper has been obtained by the German Press Agency, following a previous report by "Der Spiegel."

In it, Haßelmann and Dröge draw lessons from their time in the traffic light government and from the federal election, in which the party achieved a disappointing result of 11.6 percent.

The party is associated with major future issues such as climate protection, the defense of democracy, war and peace. In recent years, it has championed social issues such as the citizen's income. "But when it comes to people's everyday lives, people think less about us. We have to change that. Because crappy school toilets, leaky gyms, the village bus that doesn't come, the daycare center that's closed due to staffing shortages, and grandma not being able to live on her pension – all of this is part of everyday life in Germany," the paper states. All of this is just as important as the global situation.

"The time in government has cost trust," write Dröge and Haßelmann. The Greens have sometimes explained their policies too little, for example, their defense policy with demands for an expansion of defense capabilities. "However, in the struggle for the best path, we should not have narrowed the discussion so much to individual weapons systems." They do not provide details in their paper. However, Green politicians such as Anton Hofreiter have vehemently advocated for the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine in the past.

The two chairmen also take a critical view of the communication surrounding the Heating Act. "We should have prepared this law differently, discussed it differently – including publicly. Because many people were unclear about what it was actually about and how it could work for them," Haßelmann and Dröge write, without mentioning the then-responsible Minister of Economic Affairs, Robert Habeck, by name.