German Social Democrat leader Andrea Nahles to step down after EU poll losses | News | DW | 02.06.2019

Andrea Nahles, the leader of Germany's SPD, has announced her resignation following poor results for her party at the European elections. It remains unclear who will succeed her.

Andrea Nahles on Sunday announced her resignation as leader of the Social Democratic Party and its parliamentary group, saying she wanted to give the party the chance to organize her successor in an orderly procedure.

"The discussions within the parliamentary group and the large amount of feedback from the party have shown me that there is no longer support for me in holding these offices," she wrote in a statement to SPD members.

She said she would step down as party leader on Monday and as parliamentary leader on Tuesday.

The announcement follows her party's poor showing at European parliamentary elections in May, which reduced the SPD to Germany's third-biggest party behind its senior coalition partner the CDU and the environmental Greens. 

Nahles' announcement is a surprise, coming as it does before a vote on her leadership she had called for Tuesday.

She became leader of the SPD in April 2018 having led the parliamentary party since September 2017. Nahles is the first woman to have headed the party, which has roots going back to 1863, making it the oldest extant party in the German Parliament, the Bundestag.

Since 2013, the SPD has governed in "grand coalitions" with the conservative bloc formed by Merkel's CDU and the Bavarian Christian Social Union.

More to follow.

tj/jm (Reuters, dpa, AFP)

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