Lower Saxony's FDP leader Birkner announces resignation

Lower Saxony's FDP leader Stefan Birkner (49) has announced his resignation after missing entry into the state parliament. This was announced by his party on Tuesday in Hanover.

Birkner wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning that he had been asked to remain in office until a state party conference in March. According to the provisional official final result, the FDP came to 4.7 percent in the election on Sunday.

Birkner has been state chairman of the Liberals since 2011 - only in the spring was he re-elected with almost 93 percent of the votes. There was no opposing candidate at the time. Born in Switzerland, he also led his parliamentary group in the recently expired legislative period. In the spring, Birkner had said that his party wanted to get a double-digit result in the state election.

The FDP last missed out on entering the state parliament in 1998, and since 2003 the party has had a seat in the state parliament in Hanover. This is the fifth state election in Lower Saxony in which the FDP missed out. In Brandenburg, Saxony and Saarland, the Liberals are currently not represented in the respective state parliaments.

The 49-year-old Birkner was Minister of the Environment in the state from 2012 to 2013 - before that he was State Secretary in the ministry. For the coalition agreement of the traffic light in the federal government, Birkner played a leading role in negotiating the area of ​​environmental protection and nature conservation. At the state level, he rejected an alliance with the SPD and the Greens after the 2017 election.

In the state elections this year in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein, the FDP also had to accept significant losses - but it was still enough to get into the state parliament. In the Saarland elections in the spring, the party received a little more approval, but narrowly missed entering the state parliament.