The CDU and the Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia want their coalition agreement to be approved at party conferences on June 25. Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) is to be re-elected by the state parliament on June 28th. This was announced by the CDU and the Greens on Friday in Düsseldorf.

Almost a month and a half after the state elections, the first black-green government alliance in North Rhine-Westphalia should be in place at the end of June. The CDU and the Greens want their coalition agreement to be approved at party conferences on June 25. Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) is then to be re-elected in the state parliament on June 28. The two parties announced this on Friday in Düsseldorf.

Both parties only entered the coalition negotiations at the end of May. “Two weeks of open, intensive and, above all, constructive talks with the tailwind of a detailed exploratory result have shown that there is a good and sustainable basis for a successful conclusion of the coalition talks between the CDU and the Greens,” said Wüst. “We have many goals, but of course we still have intensive days of working together ahead of us.” In the “reconciliation of supposed opposites” lies an opportunity for both partners and for the country.

Greens state leader Mona Neubaur said: “North Rhine-Westphalia is facing major challenges that require sustainable answers.” In the past few weeks, the CDU and Greens have agreed that these answers “need new alliances and new alliances”. A socially just and climate-neutral transformation of our society presupposes “that we overcome old rifts and historically grown camps”.

The parliamentary groups of the CDU and Greens want to ask the President of the State Parliament to postpone the plenary session originally planned from June 22nd to 24th by almost a week (June 28th to 30th) due to the planned election of the Prime Minister.

13 specialist working groups are currently working on the coalition agreement. The basis is a comprehensive twelve-page exploratory paper.

In the state elections on May 15, the CDU emerged as the clear winner with 35.7 percent. The SPD, on the other hand, slipped to 26.7 percent. The Greens were able to almost triple their share of the vote compared to 2017 to 18.2 percent and ended up in third place. So far, the federal state has been governed by the CDU and FDP.