What is Volt and why are you on the Council for the party, Ms. Zahl?
Fighting nationalism, strengthening Europe, overcoming borders – when Joana Zahl talks about the goals of her party Volt, she goes into raptures. The social scientist knows what she’s talking about. After all, she lived in Finland as a child and lived in Thailand and Canada for a while. Now the 30-year-old sits for Volt in the Hanover Council, previously as an individual representative. “We have to do something with the council mandate,” she says and does not rule out coalitions with other parties.
Volt was founded in 2017
Volt was founded in 2017 by the Italian Andrea Venzon, the French Colombe Cahen-Salvador and the German Damian Boeselager. The party saw itself as a countermovement to the growing nationalism. Volts’ overarching goal is a federal Europe. A Volt branch has been founded in 16 countries. The party is generally assigned to the left-liberal spectrum, even if party supporters prefer to leave such categorizations behind. In Hanover, Volt won 1.7 percent of the vote in the local elections and thus won a seat on the council.
Preference for Anglicisms
Volt representative Sören Biermann was supposed to take over the mandate, but he withdrew. “Sören is not yet so strongly rooted in Hanover”, says Sören Krupka from the “Volt Hannover City Team”. The party likes to use Anglicisms to give itself an international look. If the local clubs were with the SPD, the “City Team” is with Volt. In addition, more women should sit in local parliaments, says Krupka.
“Cycling like in Copenhagen”
Therefore Joana Zahl moved up. The young woman lives in the Mitte district near Hamburger Allee. “The car traffic in the many lanes is already heavy,” she says. Like the Greens, it wants to campaign for a car-free city center and, like the SPD, it proposes to offer cheaper tickets for buses and light rail vehicles – including free local transport. In addition, there must be more and better-developed cycle paths, “like in Copenhagen,” says Zahl.
This, too, is a specialty of Volt: The party is looking for approaches in other cities to solve problems, Volt jargon called “best practice examples”. Volt’s entire election advertising is based on such references – cycling like in Copenhagen, social housing like in Vienna, digital learning like in Helsinki. “We want to make Europe tangible, also here in Hanover,” says Zahl. So she can imagine expanding the network of twin cities.
Looking for coalitions
Born in Hamburg, she graduated from high school in Lüneburg, studied first in Berlin and later in Hanover. As a student she spent an exchange year in Thailand, after graduating from high school she lived in Canada for a while. “Hanover is really nice,” says Zahl.
It is clear to the new councilor that as an individual representative she can do little. She has no voting rights in committees, and she has no office staff to help her. “We are open to coalitions,” says Zahl. Both the individual representatives of small parties such as Pirates and “Die Party”, as well as larger groups such as the Greens, would come into question. Only the AfD will exclude number from such considerations.
By Andreas Schinkel