On 27 September, following the federal elections in Germany, ALDE Party together with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF) Europe hosted the first Liberal Breakfast of the autumn, which focused on the election results and what they mean for liberals in Germany and in Europe.

Speakers Dr. Thorsten Lieb, District Chairman of the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) Frankfurt, State Deputy Chairman of the FDP Hessen and FDP Candidate for the Bundestag; and Alice Schmidt, International Officer of Junge Liberale, FDP’s youth wing, and federal working group leader on Europe and International Affairs, brought their perspectives into the discussion.

“Our analysis as the liberal party is that we had a good outcome. We are very happy with the result, and we are prepared to go into the next German Government. Christian Lindner made this very clear in the after-election discussion saying that we want to go into government, we want to talk to the other parties, specially with the Greens because when we are aligned, we will decide who will be the next chancellor in Germany,” Dr. Lieb highlighted in his remarks.

Speaking of the results, Schmidt underlined FDP’s success among the German youth: 23% of first-time voters voted liberal.

“This shows us that there is great potential that liberals have a good standing within the young generation because, from our perspective this is why they voted in such a high amount for us, they see that, for example, politicians lost sight of the young people during the corona-crisis. They did a lot for the older people and introduce support for companies but did not introduce support for students and pupils.”

“We also saw that digitalisation in Germany is in such a bad state that schools could not have digital lessons and a whole generation lost almost a year and a half. This had a great impact and I think liberal parties always had this in mind and focused on that topic,” Schmidt said.

Missed the event? You can watch the whole event here or below.