Green Youth (German: Grüne Jugend, GJ) is the youth organisation linked to the Alliance 90/The Greens (German: Bündnis 90/Die Grünen or Grüne) political party in Germany.
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History
Green Youth was founded on 16 January 1994, as an independent association with the name Grün-Alternatives Jugendbündnis (abbreviated: GAJB).
Before 1994 there were, after the first attempts in Niedersachsen like Grüne Jugend Braunschweig, founded in the spring of 1981, several state-based associations, such as the Grüne Jugend Hessen, which had been founded in the spring of 1991. It used and still uses a frog as its logo. In the same spring the Grün-Alternative Jugend Baden-Württemberg was founded. Parallel to these state-based organisations was the federal Bundesjugendkontaktstelle (Abbreviated: BUJUKS), a loose network of young members and sympathisers of Die Grünen.
After several years of debate, a federal green youth organisation was founded, in which the state-based organisations and the BUJUKS all merged. In 2001, Green Youth became an integral part of the Die Grünen and lost its independent status.
In 2024 the spokespeople and the entire federal board of ten people stepped down and resigned their Alliance 90/The Greens memberships, citing a plan to create a new left-wing youth organization, citing a rightward shift of the party on foreign, economic and environmental policy as their reason.