Tuesday’s agreement by Germany’s three-party ruling coalition on the controversial heating law averted a looming government crisis, but cracks between the governing parties are widening, with more trouble on the horizon.
After months of squabbling, the three parties finally reached a compromise on the law that would mark the end of conventional heating, hopefully opening the path towards Germany’s carbon neutrality by 2045.
The discussion over the law reached a boiling point in late May when the liberal FDP torpedoed the original draft. At the time, the Greens accused their liberal coalition partner of acting “like an opposition party in government” and warned of a looming government crisis.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz showed relief at the end of the intense row that tested the government’s integrity. “I think it jolted to a close,” he said yesterday regarding the tumultuous last weeks.
However, the issues are far from resolved as more trouble is already brewing – and this time, it could be the Greens who are responsible.
Once the hope of progressive forces in Germany, the Greens have lost much of their gravitas in recent months. While they polled at around 23% last year, they have since dropped by almost 10 percentage points.
One of their main problems is that they had to compromise on some key positions, which doesn’t sit well with their voter base.
The first blow was the blockade of the combustion engine phaseout by the FDP. As one of their core policies, the Greens were largely caught off guard when the FDP forced the government to abstain from voting on the matter in the EU Council – a huge image loss for a party dedicated to climate protection.
The compromise on the heating law was a second major blow for the Green Party, as the law should originally enter force in 2024 and will now be postponed to 2028. In a paper following the compromise, the Greens called the debate “harmful and embarrassing”.
However, by far the biggest test for the Greens was the agreement on the EU migration deal last Thursday, with many Green MPs being up in arms over what they perceive as basic human rights violations.
Sven-Christian Kindler, a prominent Green MP in the Bundestag, called the EU agreement, which would introduce rapid asylum procedures at the European border, a “disgrace for Europe” and warned of the demise of his party.
“Tens of thousands of new members have joined the Greens since 2015 because of the climate, because of the AfD and because they stand up for refugees on the ground. Many no longer understand the world after the federal government’s approval,” he told Süddeutsche Zeitung yesterday.
Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock knew her approval of the migration deal would spark controversy within her own party. On the night of the agreement, she released a press statement calling the German approval of the deal “bitter” but necessary.
As the Green ministers are increasingly under fire from their own party, it is highly likely that the Greens will be less willing to compromise in the future.
And there is already a precedent for that: the FDP.
Since the FDP entered government, their ratings have been in free fall. After they lost several state elections, they changed tack and opted for a more confrontational style of politics. Their blockade of the combustion engine phase-out is only one of the examples of this more aggressive approach.
And it has worked. While the FDP didn’t manage to get back to the heights it had been in 2021, it has at least halted its decline.
With the Green Party base up in arms and this encouraging example of the FDP in mind, the Greens will likely follow a similar path and be more confrontational in the future. And this cannot bode well for the government’s stability.
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Look out for…
- Trilogue between the European Institutions on the Banking Package on Thursday.
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- Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas on mission to Ukraine on Thursday.
- Eurogroup meeting on Thursday.
Views are the author’s
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/ Alice Taylor]
Source: euractiv.com
