Tag Archives: Greens

Time for German coalition talks

The German federal election became a success for incumbent chancellor Angela Merkel and her CDU, but simultaneously something of a problem in that the liberal FDP, the traditional CDU/CSU ally, for the first time in German post-war history saw themselves voted out of the Bundestag. This means that Angela Merkel now has to find a new coalition partner, which by necessity would mean either the social democrats or the greens. In either of these cases it will mean lengthy and difficult talks before any coalition may be put in place.

The most likely outcome is a new grand coalition between the Christian democrats and the Social democrats, but this won’t be achieved without a great deal of bargaining. The SDP is most likely wary of sitting in a coalition as the junior partner again, with clear memories of the not all that rewarding time in the latest grand coalition of 2005-2009. The Greens on the other hand are perceived to be further from the CDU/CSU in ideology, even if the differences in key areas such as the nuclear energy question much have disappeared after the Christian democrats’ u-turn after Fukushima. A CDU/CSU-Green coalition is not ruled out, but remains the more unlikely option for now.

German Greens’ success in BW

From what it looks, the German Greens have won their first government premier position in the state elections of Baden-Württemberg. With 24.2 percent of the votes the Green Party managed to become bigger than their traditional ally SPD with 23.1 percent. This by all likelyhood means that the next premier in Baden-Württemberg will be the Greens’ Winfried Kretchmann in a Green-SPD minority coalition government. The Christian Democratic CDU which are traditionally strong in the region got 39.0 percent of the vote and are now losing their grip over the state government for the first time since 1953.

Even if the circumstances can be said to be unusually in favour of the Greens’ politics, with the local debate over Stuttgart 21 – the big rebuilding of the railway station in Stuttgart – as the main focus and the nuclear disaster in Japan as a backdrop, it could also very well be seen as a possible bigger shift in political preferences, especially in Germany where the Greens have gone on to becoming a big, established party besides the traditional left and right parties SPD and CDU/CSU and catering to voters that want something else than the traditional parties.