In the CDU Some people can imagine a coalition with a party that doesn’t even exist. NOT with this Greens, CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann said before the Federal Party Congress in Berlin as a motto. “I would govern with the Greens if they were fit to govern. But it’s not at the moment,” Lower Saxony representative and MEP Jens Gieseke told FOCUS online.
This green dream party is apparently a ghost. However, the Christian Democrats are not having a purely imaginary debate about this, because at state level they have already formed a coalition with the Greens and are still doing so now.
Party leader Friedrich Mertz leave the SPD visibly calm in his opening speech, but lashed out several times the green one. The course of the CDU’s environmental policy is “the opposite of what the Greens want and do in environmental policy”. They also support a state that wants to regulate everything “down to the smallest detail of people’s daily lives”. “We have a different idea of the relationship between the state and citizens.”
Günther and Wüst stress their green partners’ ability to govern
After the next federal election, according to his party, Mertz could envision an SPD led by Lars Klingbeil and Boris Pistorius as a junior partner in a black-red government. Of course, given the Social Democrats’ weakness in the polls, it is uncertain whether such a bipartisan constellation would be enough.
This is not the only reason why influential sections of the CDU want to keep the door open to the Greens, for example the premier of Schleswig-Holstein, Daniel Günther, who governs with them in Kiel. The powerful state union of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst relies on the Greens as an alliance partner, also clearly believes they are capable of governing.
Lohmann: “Many say the Greens are bad”
“They are doing well,” said North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Herbert Ruhl in an interview with FOCUS online. However, he added: “But it’s incredibly tedious, especially when it comes to fundamental questions.”
Reul’s cabinet colleague Karl-Josef Laumann, head of health and social networking in North Rhine-Westphalia, also praised the partnership with the Greens. But he also told FOCUS online: “There are many in the CDU who say: The thing with the Greens is bad.”
Linnemann sees the greens as the furthest from the traffic lights
Also the view of the sister party CSU That much is clear. The leader of their regional group in the Bundestag, Alexander Dobrindt, just announced this in the “Augsburger Allgemeine”: “The Greens respond with ideological politics, polarize society and divide. CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann considers the Greens to be the traffic light party furthest from the Union.
Laumann points out that the CDU, the only remaining German people’s party, actually has only two major rivals: in the East the AfD and in the big cities the Greens. At most, the SPD plays a larger role in the Ruhr region. The FDP it was not worth mentioning, at least on the first day of the three-day party convention.
Wegner expresses “pure CDU”
“CDU pure,” an energizing drink for Germany that Berlin’s ruling mayor Kai Wegner blasted at the federal CDU party conference in the city he governs, probably won’t be served anywhere in the near future.
There will be long drinks and cocktails in different color combinations that you can hardly imagine today. How digestible they will be remains to be seen.