The leader of Germany's Green Party, Ricarda Lang, has reacted with disappointment at her party's loss of votes in the European elections.
"This is not the standard we set outselves when we went into this election, and we will work through this together," the co-leader of the party told broadcaster ARD on Sunday evening.
According to forecasts by broadcasters ZDF and ARD, the Greens gained between 12-12.5% of the vote. By contrast, in 2019, they achieved their best result ever in a European election with 20.5%.
The situation today is very different to the previous European elections in 2019, Lang said. People are unsettled, the issue of war and peace was hugely important to voters this time, she said.
A change of policy with regard to the war in Ukraine should not be expected from her party now, said Lang, because if Russian President Vladimir Putin were to win this war, the future would also be less peaceful in Germany, she argued.
The conservative CDU/CSU bloc won the European elections in Germany by a large margin. According to initial forecasts, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in second place.
Coalition parties the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Free Democrats (FDP) lost significantly compared to the 2019 election.
