Early beginnings

Kühnert joined the SPD in 2005 and chaired the Jusos in Berlin from 2012 to 2015. Since 2015, he acted as deputy Jusos Federal Chairman and was responsible for tax policy, pension policy, structural policy, right-wing extremism, and migration policy, as well as social media work.

Chair of the Young Socialists, 2017–2021

When Johanna Uekermann did not run as a candidate again, in November 2017, the Juso federal congress in Saarbrücken elected Kühnert as chairman, with 225 of 297 votes. In terms of local politics, Kühnert is active in the district of Tempelhof-Schöneberg as a member of the district council.

During the campaign for the SPD party member vote on the 2018 coalition agreement of Germany, Kühnert, along with the #NoGroKo (No Grand Coalition) initiative, promoted the No campaign.^[1][2] At a SPD national convention in 2019, he was elected as one of the five deputies of the party's co-chairs Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans, alongside Klara Geywitz, Hubertus Heil, Serpil Midyatli and Anke Rehlinger.^[3] He had previously endorsed Esken and Walter-Borjans in their successful bid for the leadership of the party in 2019.^[4]

In an August 2020 interview with Der Tagesspiegel Kühnert announced that he would step down as chair of the Jusos, saying that the "time was right" for new leadership in advance of an anticipated 2021 German federal election. After Kühnert resigned from the office early because of his candidacy for the Bundestag, Jessica Rosenthal was elected to succeed him on 8 January 2021, with 207 of 266 votes.^[5]

Member of the German Parliament, 2021–present

On 16 December 2020, Kühnert was nominated as a direct candidate in the Berlin constituency of Tempelhof-Schöneberg in the 2021 federal election.^[6]

In the negotiations to form a so-called traffic light coalition of the SPD, the Green Party and the FDP following the 2021 federal elections, Kühnert led his party's delegation in the working group on housing and construction; his co-chairs from the other parties were Christian Kühn and Daniel Föst.^[7]

Economic policy

In an interview with German newspaper Die Zeit in May 2019, Kühnert described himself as being a democratic socialist,^[9] promoting the municipalization of large firms and the expropriation of owners from companies like BMW and people who own more than one house or apartment. In his opinion, real democratic socialism has never been tried.^[10][11][12]

Foreign policy

In early 2022 – amid renewed military confrontations between Russia and Ukraine and anti-government protests in Kazakhstan – Kühnert argued that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to bring Russian gas to Germany should not be mixed up with political and human rights disputes with Russia.^[13]