The Greens: the environmental party
Protection of the environment was the motivation for establishing the Greens in the early 1980s. Today they are in the coalition government.
Here we introduce you to the German political parties that are represented in the Bundestag. In Germany, parties only win seats in parliament if they obtain five percent or more of the votes.
The party
Greens
Alliance 90 / The Greens
Established:
1980 / 1993
Members:
126.000
MPs in the Bundestag:
117 of 733 MPs in total
Historic figures:
Joschka Fischer, former Foreign Minister
Winfried Kretschmann, Premier of Baden-Württemberg since 2011 (the first and so far only green head of government)
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, European
Profile: The Greens emerged from a smorgasbord of all kinds of different but primarily left-wing environmental and peace-focused groups and the anti-nuclear power movement. Their goal is to reconcile ecological, economic and social sustainability. In 1993 they joined forces with the East German civil rights party Alliance 90 and the Alternative List for Democracy and Environmental Protection (AL). The Greens first won seats in the Bundestag in 1983, and in 1985 provided a member of government for the first time, namely Joschka Fischer as Hessian Environment Minister, who later became foreign minister. They are regarded as being a centre left-wing middle-class party. Committed to the European idea, the party’s long-term goal is a federal republic of Europe.
Website: www.gruene.de
Links to portraits of other political parties:
CDU/CSU , SPD, FDP, Linke, AfD
