Germany’s Green Party is facing an internal revolt over a coalition agreement that party MPs and allies say is a climate-protection sellout.
After a month of talks, the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) secured key cabinet positions and election demands in Wednesday’s 177-page deal.
At a Green Party gathering on Thursday, meanwhile, party officials said there was an “explosive” mood towards party leaders for agreeing a deal that – on climate goals and other Green priorities – appears more aspirational than concrete.
That fuelled a second row over Green cabinet appointments to revive long-dormant rivalries between the party’s leftist and centrist “realos”.
After the party surprised many Berlin observers with swift and discreet coalition talks, the furious Green in-fighting on Thursday has called into question the outcome of a 10-day coalition deal vote among the party’s 125,000 members.
“You will always find points where you could say ‘we imagined it would be different’, but we are convinced this is just the beginning for a good government that really wants to change something,” said Annalena Baerbock, Green Party co-leader and designated foreign minister.
The coalition programme says Germany will “ideally” exit fossil fuels by 2030, eight years earlier than planned. Working to that goal, the government promises to double, by the end of the decade, Germany’s renewables sector to 80 per cent of total energy mix – up from the previous goal of 60 per cent.
Solar ‘rule’
A proposal on solar energy requires solar panels on all new buildings – but only “as a rule”.
The loudest critics at Thursday’s party gathering in Berlin were the 20,000-member Green youth wing who saw “only a few improvements” in the coalition agreement to boost German social cohesion and climate measures.
“None of this goes far enough,” said Green youth wing co-leader Sarah-Lee Heinrich.
Fridays For Future (FFF) were similarly pessimistic that, with no increase in CO2 emission prices and only vague promises to boost e-mobility, Germany will never meet its climate goals.
“With the measures presented here, the three coalition parties have made a conscious decision to escalate the climate crisis,” said the FFF German branch.
Germany’s proposed new federal government would see the Green Party control the portfolios for interior, foreign, environment, family, culture and an economics ministry with an added climate component.
Many Green Bundestag MPs and regional leaders are furious that the party lost the transport ministry to the pro-business FDP, given its close links to the auto lobby.
“My position is: without a Green transport ministry, no Green government participation,” said Monika Hermann, a former Green mayor from Berlin.
‘Transport transformation’
Greenpeace Germany agreed that the “transport transformation” promised to Green voters will no longer happen.
In the coming days, Green leaders will have their hands full trying to sweeten a return to power, after 16 years, that for some has already turned sour.
“Of course when you’re talking about power things like this will happen and various party wings demand to be taken into account,” said Prof Julia Reuschenbach, political scientist at the University of Bonn. “What is surprising is that it is happening at this late stage, it is a very awkward time.”
Amid climate and cabinet rows, few at Thursday’s gathering discussed its recapture of foreign policy for the first time since the departure in 2005 of the influential Green figure Joschka Fischer.
On EU and foreign policy, German analysts were cautiously optimistic that the incoming “traffic light” coalition would be more ambitious and energetic in Europe and the world than the outgoing Merkel administration.
Crucially, the coalition deal promises “more strategic sovereignty for the European Union”, a nod to calls from other EU capitals – led by Paris – to give the bloc more strategic autonomy to act independently.
“After years of hesitation, an ambitious German agenda on European sovereignty is welcome,” said Serafine Dinkel of Germany’s Council of Foreign Relations. “But before it can improve EU-level co-ordination, the government needs to better co-ordinate its own EU policies across ministries that will now be held by three coalition partners.”