State politics | Because of expropriations: explorations in Berlin on the brink

The party leaders Steffen Krach (SPD), Nina Stahr (Greens) and Maximilian Schirmer (Left) at a press conference Photo: dpa/Sven Kaeuler Berlin at a crossroads: By the start of the autumn holidays next week, the Left, Greens and SPD want to agree on whether they will form a state government together. But the negotiations are apparently stalling. On Sunday, the negotiators parted ways without reaching a result on the expropriation issue. Negotiators are now saying that the negotiations are on the rocks.

The implementation of the referendum, which envisages the socialization of around 200,000 apartments belonging to large corporations, is one of the biggest controversial issues in the explorations. For the Left Party, this is a central campaign promise. The party recently decided at its state party conference three weeks ago that it wanted to “mandatoryly agree” on the expropriations. The coalition partners would have to agree on “a binding schedule and a financing commitment.”

But there is apparently great resistance to this - especially from the SPD. The Social Democrats are critical of the project. The state chairman Steffen Krach repeatedly emphasized during the election campaign and after the House of Representatives election that the SPD was not available for the project. In the negotiations on Sunday, the SPD representatives are said to have shown little willingness to make firm agreements.

There are concerns among the Social Democrats that expropriations could lead to investors withdrawing from the Berlin housing market. Left-wing circles say that although there is a willingness to compromise on issues, a fixed timetable is the basic requirement. The talks are scheduled to continue on Monday afternoon. SPD representatives told the “Morgenpost” that they believed an agreement was possible, but not on Monday.

On the left, the pressure to succeed is greater. On Tuesday, the left-wing faction will meet to be constituted. The MPs are likely to expect that concrete results from the explorations will then be presented.

The state leadership of the Left had recently come under pressure within the party. On Friday last week, 120 party representatives criticized in an open letter that the Left leadership had gone too far towards accommodating the SPD and the Greens on the issue of sanctions against members of parliament for anti-Israel statements. The three parties presented a paper on Thursday last week that provides a mechanism for sanctions up to and including exclusion from the parliamentary group.

“We consider the fact that our Berlin negotiators have bowed to this pressure from the SPD and the Greens to be a serious political mistake that must be corrected as quickly as possible,” it says in the protest letter. It was signed primarily by left-wing politicians active in other federal states, but also by three members of the Berlin House of Representatives. The Left Federal Executive Board supported the Berlin negotiators on Sunday. In the current situation, “we as the left have a responsibility,” it says in a resolution. "Berlin can become a beacon for a political change that manages to prevent the rise of the right and organize hope."

This debate could also escalate further. There is one particularly attractive figure for the SPD and the Greens: the Neukölln MP Vanessa “Vedi” Emde. During the election campaign, she indirectly questioned Israel's right to exist. According to media reports, she said at a demonstration: "There is no right for states to exist - people have a right to exist." She is also accused of having had contacts with a self-declared supporter of the terrorist Palestinian group PFLP.

Her name apparently came up more often in the soundings. Even before the preliminary exploratory paper was presented, SPD representatives let the media know that they assumed that Emde would not be included in the left-wing faction. In an internal chat excerpt published by the Tagesspiegel, left-wing faction leader Tobias Schulze also said that the SPD negotiators had made Emde's non-admission a condition for a coalition.

A successful conclusion of the explorations is becoming more and more distant.

When asked about this on Thursday, Left Party state chairwoman Kerstin Wolter pointed out that the Left Party had its own mechanism to deal with such cases. All Left Party candidates had signed a so-called elected representative agreement before the House of Representatives election. In addition to regulations regarding mandates, it also states that MPs must represent the party's decisions, which also include approval of Israel's right to exist.

It is unclear whether Emde sees itself bound by the elected representative agreement. According to nd information, discussions are currently underway with her to decide whether she should be accepted into the parliamentary group. Due to the great pressure within the party after the preliminary explorations, the parliamentary group leadership is likely to have little interest in giving the impression of giving in to the future coalition partners again - also because it is becoming increasingly clear that it will hardly be possible to adhere to all party conference resolutions in the explorations and coalition negotiations themselves. The SPD is unlikely to be met with much enthusiasm if Emde were to be accepted into the parliamentary group.

It is therefore unlikely that the explorations will be successfully concluded this week. The Left Party actually wanted to hold a state party conference on Friday. Because of the autumn holidays, the first week of which was set a long time ago as a non-negotiation period, the party conference is now unlikely to take place before the last weekend in October.

Even before the election campaign, the Left had decided that such a party conference had to give its consent to coalition negotiations. Opponents of government participation and pro-Palestinian party representatives could go on the offensive at the party conference after holding back shortly after the House of Representatives election. The members will then be asked about the finished coalition agreement. The left-wing negotiators are under pressure to be able to present a negotiation result that is acceptable to the base.

For the SPD and the Greens, the formation of a government is fraught with just as much uncertainty. The Greens also want to meet for a so-called small party conference shortly after the end of the explorations. The demand from the right wing of the party for a grassroots survey is likely to be discussed there.

In the case of the SPD, the state executive board should first decide on coalition negotiations. The left wing of the party dominates there. There too, however, one cannot ignore the warnings from numerous party leaders. Most recently, Economics Senator and former government leader Franziska Giffey warned against a coalition with the Left Party. This was “unjustifiable,” she wrote on Instagram on Sunday. There are also demands from the SPD for a membership decision on the coalition.

This article cost you nothing. Us: research, production and technology. We saved on office rent as well as on printing and distribution. And we gave up salary. Nevertheless, the calculation doesn't work without you. We need 300,000 euros by the end of the year. You pay what you can, in return we keep writing.

No paywall, no small print, just one goal: that nd stays.