Clear the way for red-green-red: Berlin lefts agree to contract
Created: 12/17/2021 Updated: 12/17/2021, 5:40 PM
A member of the party Die Linke opens the letters in the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus with the membership decision on the coalition agreement with the SPD and the Greens.
© Fabian Sommer / dpa
So now we can start.
After the SPD and the Greens, the left also say yes to the coalition agreement.
Berlin will soon have a ruling mayor.
Berlin - Almost three months after the election to the Berlin House of Representatives, the way is clear for the planned red-green-red coalition.
After the SPD and the Greens, the left also agreed to the coalition agreement.
In a membership decision, 74.9 percent voted for the government program, as the party announced on Friday.
This means that the SPD state chairwoman and former Federal Family Minister Franziska Giffey (43) can be elected as the new governing mayor and successor to Michael Müller (SPD) in the House of Representatives on December 21, as planned.
Then the ten senators - that's the name of the ministers in Berlin - are appointed and sworn in.
The SPD, which was the strongest party ahead of the Greens, CDU and Left with 21.4 percent in the September 26 election, has four other Senate members in addition to Giffey.
The party plans to announce their names on Monday.
Greens and leftists each get three senatorial posts, here all six names are already known.
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The three parties have been ruling Berlin together since 2016.
They had been negotiating the new coalition agreement for the next five years for a good five weeks.
It was introduced on November 29th.
On December 5th and 12th, party congresses of the SPD and the Greens approved the government program with a large majority, now also the left-wing base.
The membership decision began on December 3rd.
Each of the 8,000 or more members of the Left received a printed version of the coalition agreement and a voting slip.
The deadline for voting ended on Friday at 1 p.m.
It was then counted.
With Giffey, Berlin is getting a governing mayor for the first time - and for the first time since reunification, a city leader from the GDR.
However, Giffey is not the first woman to run the city.
Because in 1947/1948 the SPD politician Louise Schroeder officiated provisionally as Lord Mayor of post-war Berlin.
dpa
