Sunday December 12th 2021
Greens agree to contract
Giffey one step closer to the goal
The planned red-red-green government alliance in the state of Berlin takes the next hurdle. The Greens vote for the coalition agreement and also decide who should belong to the capital government.
The Berlin Greens have approved the coalition agreement of the planned new red-green-red state government. 96.4 percent of the delegates voted for the agreement presented two weeks ago at a party congress. Due to the pandemic, the party congress took place both on site in a Berlin hotel and online.
The delegates also voted on the already nominated Green Senate members of the future Berlin government. The party sends its top candidate Bettina Jarasch as Senator for Transport, Environment and Climate in the new Senate. Daniel Wesener, the previous parliamentary manager of the Greens parliamentary group, is to become finance senator. The former head of the health department in Kassel and former member of the Bavarian state parliament, Ulrike Grote, will head the Senate Department for Health and Science.
A new state executive was also elected. The delegates appointed Susanne Mertens and Philmon Ghirmai as new state chairmen. The previous heads of the regional association, Nina Stahr and Werner Graf, no longer stood for election. The digital result should be confirmed by a decentralized ballot box by Tuesday.
Giffey designated Governing Mayoress
With the Greens, the second of the three coalition parties has now given its consent to the treaty. The capital’s SPD blessed him first. At a party congress last Sunday, 91.5 percent of the delegates approved the 150-page paper. Now only the vote of the left is still pending: A membership decision by the party on the contract runs until December 17th. At a special party conference last Saturday only the results of the coalition negotiations were discussed.
If the three coalition members have finally agreed within the party, SPD regional leader Franziska Giffey wants to be elected as the new governing mayor in the House of Representatives on December 21. In addition to Giffey as head of government, the Social Democrats will have four senators in the new state government, the Greens and the Left three each.
The SPD won the Berlin House of Representatives election on September 26th, clearly ahead of the Greens and the CDU, while the Left came fourth. The SPD then sounded out with the CDU and FDP, but ultimately spoke out in favor of a new version of the alliance with the Greens and the Left Party.