German Conservatives end run of state coalitions with the Greens

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Germany’s conservative centre-right CDU party decided on Friday to enter into rapid negotiations to form a coalition with the social democratic SPD in Hesse, marking a clear departure from the party’s almost automatic practice of teaming up with the Greens at the regional level.

Coalition formations between CDU and the Greens have become commonplace at the state level in recent years, with the coalition that ended Friday having lasted 10 years before that and one such coalition taking the helm in the largest state of North-Rhine Westphalia in 2022.

“We made this decision anything but easy for ourselves,” said Hesse’s CDU governor, Boris Rhein, on Friday after the two parties had governed the state largely without noise.

However, while the CDU received almost 35% of the vote in 2023 – gaining 7.6% – the Greens saw a big loss, dropping 5% down to 15% – the CDU in Hesse decided to end it with the Greens.

This came as a shock to the Green Party grandees.

“A bad day for Hesse. The CDU’s decision after 10 years of good cooperation is completely incomprehensible,” said Omid Noripour, party leader of the Greens.

The outcome is “bitter”, but the party needs “to learn the lessons from this decision,” Michael Kellner, one of the Greens’ economy state secretaries, added.

It seems that the days of the Greens automatically joining a regional coalition with the Conservatives are over, although this was probably to be expected, especially as the Conservative leadership has been calling the Greens their ‘main competitor’ for some time.

This trend at the regional level is likely to affect any government formation process at the federal level after the next federal election in 2025 – a pattern that has already had an impact in neighbouring Austria, which itself is currently governed by a Green-Conservative coalition and is preparing for a general election in 2024.

(Nikolaus J. Kurmayer | Euractiv.de)