“We stimulate each other”

What the Annalena Baerbock/Robert Habeck team for our German neighbors, Djuna Bernard, who was elected co-president of the "déi gréng" in March 2019, and Meris Šehović, who in turn only took over the co-presidency in July last year, are here in Luxembourg: a good team. As we noted during our interview conducted last Monday, the two party leaders, who have a great desire for politics, get along exceptionally well.

Lëtzebuerger Journal: You are both still very young. What made you decide to go into politics?

Djuna Bernard: In the broadest sense, I grew up with politics at a young age because my mother was active in local politics, so there was always a certain basic interest. Then came civic involvement in the Boy Scouts and in the CGJL (Conférence Générale de la Jeunesse du Luxembourg), during which I distanced myself from politics. However, I realized relatively quickly that if you want to make a difference, you should also be politically involved. So when a door suddenly opened, I decided rather impulsively to walk through it …

What kind of door was that?

DB: When François Bausch suggested to me, during an encounter at the Migration Festival, that we could go out to dinner together. And when you are asked by a minister, of course you don't say no. Then he asked me if I would go with him to the elections, to which I answered yes. But at that time I could "never ever" have imagined that six months later I would actually be sitting in the Chamber.

Meris Šehović: I was already interested in politics at a young age and at the age of 13 I asked my parents for a subscription to Der Spiegel, which I devoured from cover to cover for years. But the big trigger was the secret service scandal, which I followed in minute detail as a university student and which made me doubt the foundations of our democracy. It was also at that time that I started to get really involved with the Young Greens and organize actions, for example for more transparency and accountability in the Wickringen/Liwingen affair, where Luc Frieden was under heavy fire for serious allegations and the "jonk gréng" started a campaign to demand accountability in the Chamber. We urged people to contact the majority caucuses via e-mail in order to exert pressure. We succeeded, with 6,000 people taking part in this campaign (hearty laughter).