“Green Party decides for governing qualification”

The party vote for the Greens’ two frontrunners in the upcoming German federal elections has shown that the party’s rank and file opt for a pragmatic approach instead of defending green vanguard positions, Cordula Tutt writes in WirtschaftsWoche. By choosing the moderate Cem Özdemir as the party’s male complement to Katrin Göring-Eckardt, who had no competitors, the Greens have opened the door for a variety of coalitions, Tutt writes. But neither Özdemir nor Göring-Eckardt have any outstanding credentials regarding the green core topics of the Energiewende and nuclear exit, she explains. Tutt says it might therefore be helpful for the party to assign a central position to Robert Habeck, currently minister for the environment and energy transition in Schleswig-Holstein, who lost the vote to become the party’s frontrunner by only a very small margin.

Read the article in German here.

For background, see the CLEW article German Greens to make coal exit, fossil car ban an election focus and the CLEW dossier Vote2017 – German elections and the Energiewende.