NRW coalition: CDU and Greens in the final spurt of their explorations

Created: 05/27/2022Updated: 05/27/2022, 13:40

Hendrik Wüst, Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia and Mona Neubaur, State Chairwoman of the Greens.

© Rolf Vennenbernd/dpa/archive image

CDU and Greens are entering the home straight of their exploratory talks for a possible black and yellow government in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Both parties continued their exchange on Friday in Düsseldorf.

The aim was to come to a reliable result paper by the evening, on the basis of which the top committees of both parties should decide on the official start of coalition negotiations at the weekend.

Düsseldorf - So far, the CDU and the Greens have never governed together in the most populous federal state.

Intermediate statuses on content and possible sticking points should not get out of the circle of the 22 delegated politicians in advance.

Under the leadership of their state party leaders, Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) and Mona Neubaur (Greens), they have been struggling for hours every day since Tuesday to find a common course.

At the beginning of the talks, both had expressed confidence that they would discuss answers to key future questions very seriously.

Around 100 delegates from the Greens will meet in Essen on Saturday for a small party conference to vote on the start of coalition negotiations based on the results.

In Düsseldorf, the similarly sized extended state executive committee of the CDU will decide on this.

The CDU clearly won the election on May 15 with 35.7 percent.

With 26.7 percent, the SPD slipped to its worst result in a state election in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The Greens were able to almost triple their share of the vote compared to 2017 to 18.2 percent and ended up in third place.

The nature conservation associations BUND and NABU expect the new state government to designate large, contiguous wilderness areas on two percent of the state in the future.

After the black and yellow previous government "largely ignored" the problem, "NRW is particularly required in the coming legislative period to make a substantial contribution to the protection of biodiversity," they warned in a joint statement on Friday.

dpa