Merkel’s party relegated to Greens’ junior partner after merger

LEINFELDEN-ECHTERDINGEN: Germany’s Greens voted on Saturday to form a coalition in BadenWuerttemberg state with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), who will assume the role of junior partner.

It is the first time that the CDU have not have the upper hand in a coalition with the Greens, an environmental party whose manifesto often overlaps with the CDU’s centre-right conservative policies.

At a party congress in the town of Leinfelden-Echterdingen in BadenWuerttemberg, the Greens voted 202 to 14 in favour of forming the coalition, with five members abstaining.

CDU delegates approved the coalition agreement by a majority at a congress in the south-western state a day previously. Following regional elections on March 13, the Greens emerged as the biggest party in a German state parliament for the first time, capturing 30.4 per cent of the vote.

Analysts have said that a Green-CDU government in Baden-Wuerttemberg could open the way for the Greens to become an option as a coalition partner for Merkel in next year’s national election.

Meanwhile reports from Hamburg said Olaf Scholz, the mayor of Hamburg and vice chairman of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD), has advised his party not to demonise the increasingly popular Alternative for Germany (AfD) over its right-wing populist polices.

“We should not demonise the AfD,” he wrote in a strategy paper. “As long as the AfD is merely right-wing populist, we should not describe them as Nazis.”

Germany is deeply divided on the refugee crisis, which brought around one million migrants to the country last year. With its anti-migrant stance, the AfD has capitalised on the public’s concerns, but many regard the party’s policies as inhuman and racist.

Its recently adopted manifesto has been come up for many brickbats in Germany and AfD leader Frauke Petry made headlines in January when she called for the use of firearms against migrants at national borders.