Less than a week before the election, I mean.

Germany’s Green party is under renewed pressure to defend its stance on paedophilia in the 1980s.

In a newspaper article, the historian Franz Walter had accused the Green’s co-leader, Jürgen Trittin, of signing off a 1981 pamphlet calling to abolish the decriminalisation of sexual acts between adults and children “that occur without the use or threat of force”. In response to the revelation, politicians from the Bavarian Christian Social Union have asked Trittin to withdraw his candidacy from the upcoming election.

Trittin is quoted in the article admitting that his party had failed to block a proposal by the activist group Homosexual Campaign Göttingen for such a measure to be included in the pamphlet. He told the paper that this was “also my mistake, which I regret”.

“Die Grünen sollten darüber nachdenken, ob sie mit dieser Besetzung weiter den Wahlkampf in der letzten Woche fortsetzen.”