Less than a hundred days before the elections, the German Greens are starting to dream of a coalition that they would form with the conservatives of the CDU, currently the favorite in the polls for the early election next February. This hypothesis fueled all the conversations in the aisles of the party congress in Wiesbaden, Saturday November 16 and Sunday November 17. This met to induct Robert Habeck, current vice-chancellor and minister of economy and climate aged 55, as official candidate.
The legislative elections must be held on February 23, 2025 in Germany, six months before the scheduled date, after the chancellor, the social democrat Olaf Scholz, broke up his tripartite coalition in power since 2021 on November 6, by dismissing his Minister of Finance, the liberal Christian Lindner. This shortened timetable imposes an accelerated campaign on parties, pushing them to already build alliance scenarios with a view to governing, even though no political group has yet formally decided on its campaign program.
The conservatives of the CDU and their candidate, Friedrich Merz, being at the head of the voting intentions, with 30% to 32% of the votes, all hypotheses are considered for the coalition which will take power in Berlin in three months – at the exception of an alliance with the far right, the second political force in the country in the polls. The Social Democrats of the SPD are currently receiving 15% to 16% of voting intentions, compared to 10% to 12% for the Greens, a relatively small gap which gives wings to the latter. A coalition combining conservatives and social democrats would lead “status quo” and to “immobility”, argued Robert Habeck on Sunday, during his candidacy speech, estimating that it is to this type of configuration that the country owes, for example, its dependence on Russian gas, a choice which dates back to the CDU-SPD coalitions of the Merkel years.
A reformist line
The Greens claim to have taken advantage of the breakup of the outgoing coalition, claiming 11,000 new members in one week, and more than 700,000 euros in microdonations, a record amount according to party officials. “The Greens need to gain a few more points and they can become a coalition partner for the CDU, explains Wolf-Christian Bleek, pulmonologist and Bavarian delegate. A three-way coalition, we saw that it didn't work. The problem is that Merz is not nice…”
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