Germany's conservative opposition scored a shock victory yesterday in a state election which also wiped out Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's centre-left government's majority in the national upper house of parliament, according to provisional official results.
The conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), the party of former chancellor Dr Helmut Kohl, and the Free Democrats (FDP) won a 56-54 seat majority, defeating the ruling Social Democrats (SPD) and Green coalition in the parliament in Hesse, Germany's fifth largest state and a centre of business and industry.
Hesse is considered an SPD stronghold and the SPD-Greens majority had been expected to prevail.
It was a stunning, and disturbing, defeat for Mr Schroeder's national SPD-Greens coalition, which has been in power just over 100 days, as the key issues were a new nationality law proposed by the ruling coalition and the radical scrap-nuclear-energy policy of the Greens Environment Minister, Mr Juergen Trittin.
The ruling federal coalition had clearly failed its first electoral test since taking power last October after 16 year's of Dr Kohl's conservative rule.
The Greens' national spokeswoman, Ms Gunda Roestel, recognised her party's setback, saying: "It's a very bitter defeat."
The results will cost the SPD its absolute majority in the Bundesrat, or upper house of parliament, which represents states at the federal level, and leave conservatives there in a position to block coalition projects.
The CDU's previously little-known leader in Hesse, Mr Roland Koch (40), hit a sensitive note with his emphasis on opposition to the government's proposal to grant dual nationality to second and third-generation immigrants.
The CDU'S campaign to block the project was supported by farright parties but labeled xenophobic by the government, church, trade unions, press and civic associations. Its success may reinforce the CDU's conservative wing, notably the Bavaria-based Christian Social Union (CSU) led by Mr Edmund Stoiber.
The results were also a clear expression of voter discontent with the Greens. Mr Trittin has been pushing for a rapid reduction in Germany's dependence on nuclear energy.
The SPD general manager, Mr Ottmar Schreiner, said the party must now turn to classic themes of social justice, an apparent disavowal of the more radical Greens positions.
The first official results in Hesse, still provisional early this morning, showed the CDU winning 43.4 per cent of the vote (up 4.2 points from the previous state election in 1995) against 39.4 percent (up 1.4) for the SPD, which is Mr Schroeder's party.
The SPD thus loses its state coalition majority with the Greens due to a disastrous Greens score of 7.2 per cent (down 4.0 points from 1995).
The FDP managed 5.1 per cent of the vote (down 2.3 points), thus making, but barely, the five per cent needed for representation in the state parliament.
Denis Staunton reports from Berlin:
The biggest losers in Hesse were the Greens. Some analysts blamed their poor performance on the unpopularity of Hesse's Justice Minister, Mr Rupert von Plottnitz, who became a favourite target of the conservative opposition.
They blamed him for a succession of headline-grabbing jailbreaks, as well as for prison overcrowding and the long waiting lists in Hesse's courts.
But many Greens fear that they are paying the price for the unpopularity of some of the policies espoused by the Bonn government. Mr Schroder appears to have successfully distanced himself from unpopular elements of his government's agreed programme, ensuring that his own poll ratings remain buoyant.
That the SPD vote in Hesse remained solid suggests that voters blame the Greens for the Bonn government's presentational problems, such as the climbdown over plans to ban nuclear reprocessing from January 1st, 2000.
The Greens may also have paid for popular opposition to the new citizenship law.
The unexpected result will encourage those within the CDU who want to move the party to the right.
Mr Edmund Stoiber, who leads their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, wants Germany's conservatives to adopt a more robustly nationalist identity and to oppose more rights for foreigners.