Germany’s chancellor presumptive Friedrich Merz has offered the Green Party a €50 billion climate transformation package to secure their backing for his €1 trillion debt-backed investment in defence and infrastructure.
For this unprecedented package the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) chairman needs a two-thirds Bundestag supermajority – including Green support – to change budgetary rules in a final vote next Tuesday.
The Greens played hard to get in a lively debate on Thursday as Merz framed his climate offer as a way to “repair” a failed climate deal from their time in government with the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).
That multiannual package promised green funding for energy efficiency measures in the construction sector, support to expand electric mobility and Germany’s charging infrastructure as well as subsidies for the hydrogen industry. Most of these measures were scrapped or scaled back drastically when the climate fund was dismissed by Germany’s constitutional court because it was financed with unspent pandemic emergency funding.
Merz said the new climate deal was “a massive leap forward that would eclipse everything not possible in the last three years”.
“Together we are repairing matters as you wished so that a climate and transformation fund is possible in a way that constitutionally compliant,” said Merz to applause from his own CDU and future coalition partners from the SPD – but to sullen silence from the Greens. Green MPs are furious that Merz wants to ram through in the coming days many measures – in particular additional funding for defence – that were just as urgent when the opposition CDU blocked them in the last term.
“Donald Trump wasn’t elected last week,” complained Felix Banaszak, Green co-leader. “So how, Mr Merz, could you manoeuvre yourself into such a situation?”
Senior SPD officials admitted on Thursday that even they were surprised by the hard line being taken by the Greens, their outgoing coalition partners.
Before they head for the opposition benches in the coming parliamentary term the Greens are determined to extract a political pound of flesh from the CDU.
Senior Green officials are preparing to reheat another failed initiative for the final days of the old Bundestag: a controversial bill to reform German abortion law.
A reform bill had passed the first reading in the Bundestag with the aim of abolishing the status quo in Germany where abortions are illegal but, in general, not prosecuted. The abortion reform bill was one of many measures that fell victim to the premature collapse of the SPD-lead coalition last November. Aware of conservative CDU politicians' fear of this hot-button issue, the Greens plan to name abortion reform as their price for backing the investment package.
“Thanks to the additional sittings, we’ve been given the chance to advance our country in women’s policy, a chance we want to take,” said Ulle Schauws, women’s affairs spokeswoman to Der Spiegel.
While the Merz spending plans have electrified German politics and delighted many EU partners, some departing Bundestag politicians warned the measures presented real risks for the future.
Outgoing leader of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) Christian Lindner said the plans would relax the so-called debt brake “to the point of ineffectiveness” and place a significant financial burden on future generations.
“This does not strengthen our security, but on the contrary provokes new risks,” said Lindner, who was voted out of the Bundestag along with his party.
Joking about the CDU U-turn on the so-called debt brake, which it promised to leave untouched before last month’s election, Lindner asked the CDU leader: “You there in the front row: Who are you, and what have you done with Friedrich Merz?”
