When he hears the election results, there is nothing to be seen of the demonstrative serenity that Kevin Kühnert radiates otherwise. More than 88 percent, it is the best result for a Juso chairman since 1969. Kühnert remains sitting for a moment while the nearly 300 delegates stand in the hall and cheer. Then he nods, blows his cheeks and hugs his deputy.
He accepts the election, says the 30-year-old on the stage of the Congress Hall in Schwerin. The result gives him "great tailwind for everything that comes now".
For two years Kühnert leads the junior association of the SPD. It was a wild two years, which he remembers on that day. When he was elected as the successor of Johanna Uekermann in 2017, the Jamaica negotiations had just burst. At the SPD party conference a little later Kühnert had a first much noticed appearance when he warned with drastic words before a renewed grand coalition.
And now? The SPD is still in GroKo and she's still struggling with it. Kühnert is the most famous opponent of the alliance with the Union - and he wants more now. Earlier this week, he announced his candidacy for the party executive, and he also envisioned the leap to one of three posts of deputy SPD chairman.
His chances are not so bad. The Jusos have grown differently from the party, with more than 80,000 members almost as tall as the Greens. The association has become a power factor in the SPD - and thanks Kühnert with great unity. This shows up at the Federal Congress in Schwerin. For that, the Berlin rhetorically does not have to trump big. At the Juso meeting a year ago in Dusseldorf, he had spoken much more rousing and torn the delegates several times already during the speech from the seats.
"Out of the neoliberal pampas"
This time around, in the huge Schwerin Congress Hall, Kühnert seems more thoughtful, more thoughtful, in parts, especially in his first speech. At least as far as your own people are concerned. He scolds Angela Merkel ("hovering like a ghost over her party") and scoffs at Friedrich Merz ("Rocky Horror Picture Show") and Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
He does not even mention the name of Vice-Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Only at the competitor for the party presidency, he once worked off when he attacks Klara Geywitz 'plea for arms exports. Geywitz had said at the TV duel on Monday, if not Germany produced the weapons, then it would do it to others. "This is a legitimate position," says Kühnert, "but I think it is nonsense, so it negates that we orient our values policy." The Jusos strictly reject arms exports.
Otherwise Kuhnert but holds back with attacks on Scholz and Geywitz. Instead, he justifies the Juso support for Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken. "We question the status quo," he says. The SPD must "out of the neoliberal Pampa" (a continuous quote from Walter-Borjans), leave the leaden heaviness of GroKo behind and prepare a red-red-green alliance.
At the Juso Congress, there should be no showplay of the duel for the party presidency. It is not until Esken, Geywitz and Walter-Borjans arrive in Schwerin on Saturday that Scholz is prevented from attending the event, they say. Kühnert sees his role as a driver, as a content critic of the next-so-course of a party that has been in decline for years. "We want radicality," he says and receives loud applause: "We are not from the Quark, the answers in the coalition agreement are too small."
Example climate package: Kühnert shows quite self-critical. The Jusos had long failed to give clear answers to the climate crisis. "We have something to catch up with," he says. The climate package of the Federal Government does not go far enough for the youth association. There must be a significantly higher CO2 price, compensation for small and medium-sized incomes, as well as free public transport, demand the Jusos. "That would be a social democratic answer to the climate crisis," says Kühnert.
Environment Minister Svenja Schulze holds against it on Friday. "We achieved much more than we thought a year ago," she says. The SPD could be proud of that. But nobody else in the room seems to be proud of the climate package. Schulze gives a standard speech, the Jusos take it emotionless.
Enthusiasm among the delegates arouses only Kühnert on this day.