Dröge sets conditions: Berlin's Left Party must solve its antisemitism problem
The Greens' Bundestag group leader defends the talks in Berlin but warns that otherwise the Greens "can at some point only form coalitions with the SPD".
Archive image · Photo: Martin Kraft / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Greens parliamentary group leader Katharina Dröge defended her party's talks with the Left Party in Berlin on Deutschlandfunk on Monday. The Berlin Left must enforce the agreements against antisemitism and clan crime and "solve the antisemitism problem in its own ranks", she said. Otherwise the Greens "can at some point only form coalitions with the SPD".
Greens co-leader Franziska Brantner said on ARD that the Berlin Left "obviously has a problem with antisemitism, also with proximity to organised crime". Nevertheless, the Berlin Greens voted on Monday evening for coalition talks, as the SPD state executive had done earlier. Violations of the agreed principles could be sanctioned up to expulsion from a parliamentary group. The Left Party decides at a congress on 31 October.