Poll shows German Green party head considered more important than Merkel

BERLIN, March 28 (Xinhua) -- German citizens rated the leader of the Green party Robert Habeck as Germany's most important politician above Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), according to Politbarometer, a monthly survey by German public broadcaster ZDF published on Thursday.

For the first time, Habeck overtook Merkel as the most important German politician with an average score of 1.4 and 1.3 respectively. In the previous month's survey, respondents had still ranked the Green leader below Merkel.

Andrea Nahles, leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) both received average negative ratings with minus 0.1 and minus 0.9 points respectively.

Turning to the European election, the Politbarometer showed that 33 percent of Germans would vote for the CDU/CSU and 18 percent would vote for the SPD and the Greens respectively. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) would get 10 percent of the votes, Germany's liberal party (FDP) 7 percent and the Left party 6 percent.

Interest in the upcoming European elections grew among German citizens, with 41 percent saying they were very interested in the elections. Before the last European Parliament elections in 2014, only 23 percent showed the same level of interest.

In contrast, 59 percent of German citizens said that they had little or no interest in the European elections. Nonetheless, the share of Germans who did not care in the European elections still decreased from 77 percent in 2014, according to the Politbarometer.

For almost half of Germans, the greatest challenge currently facing the European Union (EU) was strengthening internal cohesion while 26 percent believed that the refugee problem was the EU's most urgent task. Only 12 percent regarded securing the prosperity of European citizens as the greatest challenge.