News blog on federal politics: Klingbeil wants to put the entire SPD party leadership up for election

The Vice Chancellor announced that this will happen at a party conference at the turn of the year. At the same time, he emphasizes that there is “no wobbling in the dual leadership” after Bas' resignation.

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Important updates

Klingbeil: The entire leadership of the SPD should be up for election

Attacks were “inhumane” and “indecent”: SPD reactions to Bas’ resignation

Merz pays respect to Bas, Wadephul sees no impact on the coalition

Alexander Schweitzer is to become the new Federal Minister of Labor

In full: Personal statement from Bärbel Bas on her resignation

Klingbeil: The entire leadership of the SPD should be up for election

After the resignation of SPD leader and Labor Minister Bärbel Bas, the SPD wants to put its entire leadership up for re-election at a federal party conference at the end of the year. The SPD leadership has agreed on a corresponding proposal, said party leader Lars Klingbeil in Berlin. What is needed is “clarity about the SPD’s programmatic course,” he said. He did not say whether he would run again. However, he emphasized, there is “no wobbling at the dual leadership”.

In full: Personal statement from Bärbel Bas on her resignation

"Dear comrades, dear colleagues, today I am turning to you with a very personal message. After the death of my stepdaughter, I realized that I need time to process the grief. I would like to take enough time for myself. Furthermore, I unfortunately have to state that the public attacks on me, unfortunately also from the ranks of the coalition partner, were further intensified during this difficult time for me personally.

Since I cannot currently muster the strength to fully carry out my government and party work in the short term, I have decided to resign from both positions. That's why I informed my co-chairman and vice-chancellor Lars Klingbeil that I am resigning from my position as party chairman as of today. At the same time, I asked the Chancellor to dismiss me from my position as Federal Minister of Labor and Social Affairs.

This step was not easy for me. However, I am convinced that the employees of the Federal Ministry now deserve a strong house management that will push ahead with the upcoming laws and reform projects with full force. At the end of my time as minister, I would like to say one thing above all: thank you for the support that I received throughout the House.

The same applies to my party. The SPD will draw the right conclusions from the recent elections and will once again become a political force that will lead our country into a good future. The course for this is, among other things: with the Convention and the policy program process. At this point I would like to thank Lars Klingbeil and Matthias Miersch for their close and trusting cooperation and all of you in the party and parliamentary group for your support. Today a chapter ends for me, but not the story.

Because what remains are not the offices we have held, but the traces we leave in people's hearts. Thank you for allowing me to walk part of this journey with you. Not every step was easy. Not every decision was easy. And certainly not everything was successful. But one thing was always clear to me: It's worth standing up for what we believe in.

I will continue to represent the citizens of my constituency of Duisburg in the German Bundestag and very much hope to be able to do my work at full strength again soon. happiness and friendship,

Your Bärbel Bas”

Carim Soliman

Attacks were “inhumane” and “indecent”: SPD reactions to Bas’ resignation

Many party colleagues expressed their sadness and support after Bärbel Bas' withdrawal. “We are all just people behind the offices,” said her SPD co-leader Lars Klingbeil. That's why he can personally understand the step. “The attacks against her in the final days of her mourning were indecent,” the vice-chancellor added. “That’s not appropriate.” Klingbeil also canceled his trip to India, which he planned to leave for late Monday afternoon. SPD parliamentary group leader Matthias Miersch praised Bas for showing his attitude, even when things became uncomfortable. “But the power is finite.”

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig sharply criticizes the Union's behavior. "My condolences go out to Bärbel Bas," the SPD state leader wrote on platform

“Great gratitude and deep compassion: these two feelings predominate for me today in view of the resignation of Bärbel Bas,” said Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke. Woidke praised his party colleague as a “determined fighter for good work, decent wages and a reliable welfare state”. “Straightforward and clear in attitude with great passion for social democracy – that’s how we know her.”

The Berlin SPD state chairman Steffen Krach criticizes the Union's behavior. “Bärbel Bas deserves our sincere respect and thanks, and above all I wish her a lot of strength now,” Krach told the German Press Agency in Berlin. “It makes me dismayed and sad that she was attacked in such a way by her coalition partner during this personally difficult time.” Krach emphasized: "Despite all the political differences, we must never forget that behind every political office there is a person. And we should always pay attention to that when dealing with one another."

“Bärbel Bas did an excellent job as party leader, but also as labor minister,” said Federal Environment Minister Carsten Schneider on the sidelines of a meeting of EU environment ministers in Luxembourg. “This is a very painful resignation that we now have to come to terms with.” He shows that politics is “a very stressful and hard business in public.” Schneider did not want to comment on the question of who should take over Bas's job at the top of the party.

The resignation of Bärbel Bas “affects us all,” writes Bundestag member and former Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach on

“The resignation of Bärbel Bas not only makes me sad, but also affected and thoughtful,” said parliamentary group leader and top candidate for the 2027 state elections, Jochen Ott, in Düsseldorf.

Carim Soliman

Merz pays respect to Bas, Wadephul sees no impact on the coalition

Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed his respect for Federal Labor Minister Bärbel Bas, who resigned on Monday. He and Bas had “worked together in a spirit of trust” in the federal government, the CDU leader wrote on Monday on the online platform X. He thanked the SPD politician for her commitment. “Your decision deserves respect.” As a father and grandfather, he can only imagine how heavy this loss is. He wishes her and her family a lot of strength.

Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) also personally paid tribute to Bas when he arrived for the second day of the CDU meeting on the heavy defeats in the state elections in September. His thoughts are with her, “because she is really a very fine person who we will certainly miss in the coalition.” But he does not expect Bas' resignation to have any impact on the coalition's work: "We have a task to fulfill here for four years."

The Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU chairman Markus Söder also spoke on X of “respect” for Bas’ decision. “We wish Ms. Bas a lot of strength and thank you for the good cooperation.”

NRW Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) reacted with compassion to the resignation of Federal Labor Minister and SPD leader Bärbel Bas. “It is not right for parents to have to say goodbye to children,” Wüst wrote on the X platform. “My thoughts and my deepest sympathy are with Bärbel Bas and her family.” He has great respect for Bas's personal decision.

Bas justified her resignation as Labor Minister and SPD co-leader that morning with her sadness over the death of her stepdaughter and with attacks from the ranks of her coalition partner, the Union.

Carim Soliman

Alexander Schweitzer is to become the new Federal Minister of Labor

The Rhineland-Palatinate SPD parliamentary group leader Alexander Schweitzer is to succeed Bärbel Bas as Federal Labor Minister. An SPD spokeswoman confirmed this upon request. Bas had resigned earlier in the morning due to a bereavement and displeasure with the Union's handling of it. Schweitzer, 53 and a lawyer, was Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate from 2024 to 2026, but lost the state election in March. He had since been said to have ambitions of wanting to move to the federal cabinet in Berlin.

The decision is not met with understanding by everyone in the SPD. The federal chairmen of the Working Group of Social Democratic Women (ASF) are insisting on a woman at the head of the Federal Ministry of Labor. "We expect that the new ministry will be filled by a woman. There are competent women who are familiar with the current legislative processes and have experience at the federal level," said Ulrike Häfner and Carmen Wegge to the Rheinische Post. "There are women who can easily take over the ministry. We firmly oppose post-trading between men," both added.

Bas also renounces the position as co-chair of the SPD. The coalition partners CDU, CSU and SPD can each decide for themselves who should lead the ministries that they occupy according to the coalition agreement.

Söder calls on CDU dissidents to leave the party

With a view to the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt, CSU leader Markus Söder has asked dissidents in the ranks of the Union to leave. "Do you want to go somewhere else? Then say so," said Söder on the ARD program "Caren Miosga". “Anyone who votes for the AfD doesn’t have the same future with us.”

Since the election of the AfD's first state parliament president in Magdeburg at the beginning of October, it has been unclear who else voted for the AfD candidate apart from their own MPs and those from the BSW. He received four more votes in a secret ballot. Söder said that this probably happened out of a deep wound on the part of the CDU faction.

In Saxony-Anhalt, the CDU lost almost 20 percentage points in the state elections at the beginning of September. The AfD politician Ulrich Siegmund is standing for election to the office of Prime Minister in December. When asked whether he believed that no CDU MP would vote for Siegmund, Söder said: "Based on the result, you can't say that. I just think that all those who are thinking about doing something like that should please have the backbone to make it public." It would then be best for them to “move in the political direction straight away,” said Söder. “Because I think that’s pretty shabby.”

CDU state ministers write to Merz: no sugar tax

The Union's nine agriculture and consumer protection ministers from the federal states spoke out against the planned sugar tax in a letter to Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU). In the letter, which is available to the German Press Agency (dpa) and also went to Chancellery Minister Nina Warken and parliamentary group leader Thorsten Frei (both CDU), they refer to the coalition agreement of the black-red federal government. When it comes to this topic, he relies “above all on voluntariness, incentives and personal responsibility”.

The letter is signed by ministers from Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt - as well as by the Berlin Senator for Consumer Protection. Bild and Welt were the first to report on it.

A sugar tax relies on state control and unnecessarily puts an additional burden on the purchase of certain foods, criticize the department heads in the letter. Nutrition education, personal responsibility, education and innovation are the right way to reduce sugar. “Against the background of the economic situation of agricultural businesses with rising costs for fertilizer and diesel, an intervention in the sugar market with the result of falling revenues cannot be negotiated,” is another argument.

Rhineland-Palatinate Minister Christine Schneider, who is also chairwoman of the Agriculture Committee in the Federal Council, told the dpa: “Healthy nutrition is important to me, but not through the means of regulatory policy, but through nutrition education.” The sugar tax inhibits the purchase of certain foods, “which further exacerbates the current situation in agriculture.” The food industry has already made progress in reducing sugar. “We want to support this path.”

BSW politician calls for German diesel deal with Moscow

Following the example of US President Donald Trump's diesel agreement, the BSW is also calling for Russian energy supplies to Germany. “Germany also needs a diesel deal with Russia,” said Claudia Wittig, deputy BSW parliamentary group leader in the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt, to the Reuters news agency. The prices at German gas stations are a scandal. “The sanctions policy against Russia, which primarily harms us, has failed across the board.”

What is needed is not just a diesel deal, but also a regular return to Russian oil and gas - not least to save German industry. The Magdeburg state parliament will vote on this on Wednesday at the initiative of the AfD and BSW. Both parties have had a majority since the state elections and are considered Russia-friendly. However, the federal states are not responsible for foreign and energy policy.

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