Decision to drop key issues welcomed by other negotiating parties but criticised by some supporters

Germany’s Green party has agreed to compromise on key environmental issues in talks between parties hoping to form a coalition government by the end of the year.



The party’s decision to back down on its insistence over a ban on combustion engines and the closing down of coal-fired power plants was welcomed by the other negotiating parties as paving the way for official negotiations to begin.

But the news was met with disgruntlement by some Green supporters, who fear the party’s leaders are in danger of watering down some of their core environmental policies in return for entering government.

Angela Merkel’s conservative alliance, the pro-business liberal Free Democratic party (FDP) and the Greens are jostling for their positions in what has been dubbed the Jamaica coalition, due to the match between the parties’ colours and the yellow, green and black Jamaican flag.

After the latest round of exploratory talks between the parties, the Greens said they were ready to admit that their goal of a ban on combustion engines by 2030 was unrealistic.

“It is clear to me that we will not be able to enforce a ban on internal combustion engines by 2030,” the Greens’ co-leader Cem Özdemir told Stuttgarter Zeitung.

The Greens are also prepared to modify their demand that the 20 most polluting coal-fired power plants in Germany should be shut by 2020.

The FDP is strictly against a quick pull-out from coal-fired power. The party’s leader, Christian Lindner, said he would prefer to see more development aid pumped into climate protection instead, suggesting that Germany might suffer energy supply shortfalls if power stations were shut down. The Greens insist Germany produces far more electricity than it needs so shortages are not to be feared.

The Greens’ parliamentary leader, Anton Hofreiter, has signalled that in return he expected the other parties to make compromises over the Greens’ proposal to make it easier for families of refugees in Germany to be able to join them.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Greens’ Anton Hofreiter, left, with co-leaders Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Cem Özdemir. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images

Both Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party the CSU are meanwhile keen to assert their leadership having suffered historic losses in September’s election. The CSU in particular has indicated its readiness to move to the right in order to claw back the millions of voters both parties lost to the rightwing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

The presence of the AfD in the Bundestag has given the negotiators an extra impetus with the participants publicly acknowledging the need to pull together to create a strong and stable government.

Germany has never before had a coalition between the conservatives, liberals and Greens on the national level, where the parties’ vast differences have been seen as too great..

Merkel has said she expects the exploratory talks to be completed soon, so that official negotiations can begin on 16 November. A coalition is not expected to be finalised before Christmas.

She has warned against the suggestion made by Lindner of new elections as an alternative should the talks fail. “It is not clever to be constantly talking in public about new elections,” she said, noting that the parties had a national responsibility to form a stable government.