Compromises from Germany's first Green premier

By Jean-Baptiste Piggin Apr 27, 2011, 15:42 GMT

Designated Prime Minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Winfried Kretschmann (The Greens), presents the coalition agreement at the Haus der Architekten in Stuttgart, Germany, 27 April 2011. Kretschmann is Germany\'s first \'Green\' party Federal State Governor. EPA/MARIJAN MURAT

Berlin - The man set to become Germany's first Green state premier, Winfried Kretschmann, outlined Wednesday the compromises he will make as his party fits its environmentalist agenda to the cold reality of governing.

Baden-Wuerttemberg state's four nuclear power plants will be decomissioned, but probably not until 2020. They will be replaced by wind farms, now a rarity in the state, and hydro-electric dams, a central promise of the Green Party to voters.

In a major political upset last month, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats were tipped from power in the powerhouse industrial state they have ruled for six decades. The Green Party overtook the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) in the election.

The Greens have been junior coalition partners before, but have never led a federal or state government.

Helped by public alarm at the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the Greens won 24 per cent of the vote and the SPD 23 per cent, enough to form a coalition with a slender legislative majority.

Kretschmann, a former schoolteacher, is set to be appointed premier on May 14 in Stuttgart, the city where Mercedes-Benz cars and trucks, Porsche sports cars and Bosch electronic equipment are made.

Big business has close ties to the SPD through the trade unionists who sit on the boards of companies, and the SPD takes a jaundiced view of Kretschmann's urgings to Germans to stop buying big cars.

Reducing car sales would mean fewer car-factory jobs.

In four weeks of coalition negotiations, the two parties agreed to appoint the state SPD leader, Nils Schmid, as minister of both finance and the economy, a post in which he is expected to ward off some of the Greens' more idealistic policies.

The Greens' main gain was a coalition commitment to buy a fleet of electric cars for state officials and welfare workers to use on their rounds.

Since their foundation in the 1970s, much of the original radicalism has rubbed off from the Greens. Kretschmann, a grey-haired 62, is often hailed as the archetype of the Green conservative.

The state has a large shareholding in Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg (EnBW), the state electricity company.

Even a Green premier will have to protect that public investment, worth billions of euros, although the assets include the nuclear power stations which the Greens hate.

He said his first priority was to ensure that two idled plants, out of four in the state, were never brought back into operation.

He left it unsaid that he would keep the two functioning plants in operation. He is expected to obtain a seat on the company board.

In four weeks of coalition negotiations, Kretschmann also had to surrender to the SPD over his party's main electoral plank, a promise to abandon remodelling work on Stuttgart's main railway station.

Despite clashes last summer between police and conservationists, part of the station has been demolished and the ground has been broken to relocate the railtracks into tunnels under the ciy.

In the coalition contract, the SPD said it supports the station remodelling begun under the previous government, but is willing to hold a plebiscite about it. Observers agree that the Greens have almost no chance of winning such a referendum.

State congresses of the two parties are being called on May 7 to approve the five-year coalition plan.

Other Green policies are likely to be controversial in the prosperous and conservative state.

Some locals are fuming at Kretschmann's willingness to open a nuclear waste dump in the state as the price for closing down nuclear power, and fear the scenic Black Forest will soon be spoiled by wind turbines, dams and high-voltage wires.

In the name of social justice, the coalition plans to merge academic-style secondary schools, which cater to middle-class families, with public schools that cater to lower-achieving children, often from poor families.

School mergers proved electoral death in another state, Hamburg, where the Greens were juniors in a coalition with the Christian Democrats. Angry voters kicked both parties out of power in February.

Elsewhere in Germany, the Greens are still riding high, with national support running at 27 per cent of voters. Their natural allies, the SPD, are supported by 22 per cent, enough for the two to form a coalition.

The two government blocs, the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats, command support of only 31 and 4 per cent respectively, a poll issued Wednesday by Forsa, a survey company, for Stern magazine and RTL television said.

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