Speed limit, driving ban, nuclear phase-out: The Greens are finally meeting again for a face-to-face party conference. A number of grass-roots motions are likely to anger the establishment, as they could jeopardize the government’s go-ahead. But the coalition is not at stake. Or?
This Friday, the Greens are gathering for the Federal Delegates’ Conference (BDK) in Bonn. While Baerbock and Habeck have long been co-governing the country, the green base shows how great the opposition is. She submitted various motions for the party conference: phase out nuclear power, get ministers out of the Bundestag, get the party out of Facebook, lower taxes on vegan products, higher taxes for the rich, speed limit of 100 km/h on motorways, only 80 more Country roads and a 14-day Sunday driving ban. crash! Boom! Bang!
The Greens are the Hulk of German politics: colour, muscles, fan base. After the successful Lower Saxony elections last Sunday, there is a high probability that they will soon be in 12 of the 16 state governments. In local elections in major cities such as Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Cologne, they have reliably won the largest number of votes in recent years.
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But above all: Since December 2021, the party founded in 1980 with three female and two ministers has been an important part of the traffic light coalition in the federal government. If the “Politician of the Year” Annalena Baerbock is something like the She-Hulk, Robert Habeck, who recently passed down in the politician popularity ranking, is still Bruce Banner. Clever enough to slap the coalition partner FDP in the “daily topics” and slap him the buck in front of an audience of millions when the nuclear phase-out is still to be postponed.
It’s a good thing that the party conference is now … the political market players will think so. Then the green base will do what the opposition and cabinet colleagues are currently unable to do: mix things up properly. The government Greens stand united.
Some of the applications that were submitted in advance by the Greens members who are happy to be familiar with you are really tasty. Some will not please “the Annalena” and “the Robert”, others could plunge the traffic light coalition into an even deeper crisis.
The Greens are not only deeply rooted in the peace movement of the 1980s, anti-nuclear power in particular is their core brand. When Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the gradual phase-out of nuclear energy for Germany by the end of 2022 in 2011, they had to applaud from the opposition bench.
In view of the acute energy crisis of these days, the increasing generation of electricity from lignite and Greta Thunberg’s blessing for continued operation, it is currently difficult for large parts of the population to get out of nuclear power in the near future. The grassroots Greens still want to stick to it. Whatever it takes.
In one of several motions on the subject, it says: “We call on the federal government, in particular the Green Group and Economics Minister Robert Habeck, to stick to the coalition agreement and thus to the nuclear phase-out. We reject an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act that would allow nuclear power plants to continue operating beyond December 31, 2022.”
While the liberals are demanding at least a temporary extension of the service life of the three remaining nuclear power plants until 2024, the responsible minister only wants to put the two south German Isar 2 reactors near Landshut and Neckarwestheim into stretching operation anyway. Habeck and Lindner bicker about it publicly.
Internal debates on this issue are likely to become even more intense. As much hatred as Joschka Fischer at the Greens’ special party conference in Bielefeld in 1999 on the question of the NATO mission in Kosovo and German participation in it, Habeck will probably not face it in the nuclear debate, nor any bags of paint. But he will have to fight for his stretching operation. If he doesn’t even get the backing of his party for this, he won’t have it any easier as Federal Minister of Economics now and as a possible candidate for chancellor in the future.
“Save energy NOW!” is a request from a member of the Greens from the Eifel. This stipulates that the parliamentary group and members of the government in the coalition implement the following points immediately:
The transport department is in the hands of the FDP in the federal government. Minister Volker Wissing rejects a temporary speed limit – partly because of the associated logistical effort. He also doesn’t think a permanent maximum speed can be implemented: “That drives a wedge in society.” If the Green Ministers come out of the party congress with a speed limit at the weekend, the next big conflict is programmed within the traffic lights.
And a comment on the intended driving ban for alternately even and odd license plate numbers: There should also be families among Green voters who have two or more vehicles on the road. With a bit of luck, they would still have permanent free travel.
Citizens’ income, which “Hartz IV” is to replace at the turn of the year, is heating up tempers across the country. Many hard-working people, especially from the low-wage sector, fear that day-to-day drudgery would then be even less worthwhile and that recipients of citizen income would be better off if in doubt. In September, the red-green-yellow cabinet decided on citizen income. Single people should get 502 euros a month from January, 53 euros more than before. In addition, the protective assets are to be increased, rental and heating costs are to be taken over and the sanction options are to be reorganized.
Not enough for parts of the Greens. The “Federal Working Group on Work, Social Affairs, Health” demands an additional assumption of the electricity costs outside the standard rate. The increased electricity prices are a not insignificant cost factor, especially for Hartz IV recipients and future citizens’ allowance recipients. But to saddle it up again here, in addition to taking over the heating costs, would bring the citizens’ benefit even more into disrepute. It is hard to imagine that the liberal coalition partner would also raise their hand for this.
To a certain extent, an Ever-Green is another application: The district association Peine calls for the introduction of a wealth tax as soon as possible. According to the applicants, it should “apply to assets above two million euros per person and amount to one percent annually”. At the latest, Federal Finance Minister Lindner will intervene here.
taxes down! The liberal coalition partner actually has that exclusively. But of course, this Green motion is not about income tax, but about sales tax on “plant milk and other meat or milk substitute products made from plants”, vulgo: vegan products.
The reduced VAT rate of 7 instead of 19 percent is intended to “relieve the burden on end consumers by having to pay less overall for some elementary products and services”. In addition, a “healthy, climate-friendly diet should be encouraged and not penalized.”
This motion does not contain the potential to break the traffic light. There are no agreements on this in the coalition agreement. But why soy milk should be a staple food and should be taxed at a correspondingly low level is not necessarily clear.
Proposal 20 under “Miscellaneous” is personally bitter, but probably not particularly tragic. The members of the federal government are asked here to resign their Bundestag mandate. Key word: Separation of office and mandate. “This basic principle of our party, which is based on grassroots democratic ideas, is currently not being followed by Robert Habeck, Annalena Baerbock, Cem Özdemir, Steffi Lemke and Lisa Paus,” the statement said.
This application is unlikely to be successful. For years, the idea of separation has not been consistently thought through to the end by the Greens. For example, the two federal chairmen, Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour, are still members of the Bundestag despite taking over their party offices. In the state parliaments, too, the Green ministers did not have to give up their state parliament mandates.
And it’s getting even more colourful: one demand is that the federal party should stamp its Facebook account with a link to the gruene.de website within two months. State, district and local associations should also withdraw from the social network within two months. Because: “The problem does not lie in the core of the content that is published on Facebook, but in the business model behind it,” is the reasoning.
Because: “When we publish political content on Facebook, profiles of all people who use our Facebook pages are created and this data is then sold.” The applicant emphasizes: “I think if we say goodbye to Facebook as the first party, we get more attention than through the Facebook presence.” He could even be right about that.
The famous party conference directors will probably not find it easy at the weekend to steer programmatic conflicts and the expected base anger into regulated channels. Because one thing is also clear: The Greens are not a fun party. You mean business. How serious, we’ll see.
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