Premiere of the cooperation – First black-green alliance in North Rhine-Westphalia is getting closer – News

• In the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Greens and the CDU are preparing to form a joint government.
• The state executive of the CDU unanimously said yes to the official start of coalition talks.
• The Greens had previously voted unanimously in favor of negotiations.

The CDU is of the opinion that the twelve-page exploratory paper with common goals of both sides that has been drawn up in the past few days is “overall a viable basis” for the start of coalition negotiations, said state party leader and Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst after the meeting of the party’s executive committee. Two weeks after the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, the two election winners don’t want to waste any time: talks in Düsseldorf are scheduled to start as early as Tuesday.

With 35.7 percent, the CDU received the most votes in the election – even with an unusually large nine-point gap to the NRW-SPD, who were penalized with an all-time low. The very self-confident Greens have almost tripled their share of the vote compared to 2017 to 18.2 percent.

The Greens also praise the exploratory paper

While the CDU, with its approximately 100-strong extended state executive, met behind closed doors in their Düsseldorf party headquarters, the Greens discussed at a small party conference in Essen on the open stage. But there was no major controversy.

The critical leader of the Greens in the state parliament, Verena Schäffer, praised the exploratory result drawn up by a total of 22 state politicians from both sides almost effusively: “As a civil rights activist, as a domestic politician, I fully support this paper because it is really good.” Neither did party leader Mona Neubaur save on words of encouragement to her base: “What now lies ahead of us as an opportunity is that we shake hands with a CDU over a bridge and find cross-camp solutions,” she emphasized in front of around 100 delegates in Meal.

Noble goals call for commitments

The two parties, who have so far mainly acted as opponents in parliament and in the election campaign, will have to deliver a lot more concrete information in the coming weeks in order to underpin their outlined intentions for cooperation. NRW should become a climate-neutral industrial state, use less land, support all children optimally with the latest digital technology and bring them into education. But 14 headings in the exploratory paper filled with noble goals call for concepts, budget figures and binding implementation dates.

The devil is likely to be in the details – not least in the “Finance” chapter, which postulates no less than complying with the debt brake, but investing “at the same time consistently and sustainably” in education, infrastructure, social cohesion and climate protection.

North Rhine-Westphalia is Germany’s most populous state – a black-green coalition would be the first of its kind for the state.