Berlin left-wing MP Emde: On a crash course

T he Berlin House of Representatives has 153 members and is the largest state parliament in East Germany. 91 of them can be assigned to the parties that have been negotiating a red-green-red coalition led by the Left Party since Monday. And yet it can depend on a single representative that this alliance does not come into being.

The point is not that the majority of such a left-wing alliance would depend on exactly this one vote. Red-Green-Red would have a comfortable 15-vote majority. Completely different from Hesse in 2008, where such a coalition would have only had a narrow majority and ultimately failed due to a few reluctant SPD MPs.

No, in Berlin, 45-year-old Left Party MP Vanessa Emde can prevent a left-wing alliance simply by remaining a member of the Left faction. For critics, Emde symbolizes exactly the anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel in the ranks of their state association, which caused many debates about its ability to govern and form alliances even before the parliamentary election on September 20th.

The Left Party, which did better in the election than ever before in Berlin and became the strongest force with 25.7 percent of the vote, only got to the current coalition talks through a written distancing from anti-Semitism (and organized crime, another open flank). The Greens and the SPD, as possible partners, had pushed for this and otherwise didn't even want to enter into exploratory talks.

However, MP Emde continues to deny Israel's right to exist. Because she not only thinks so, but also continues to make it public after signing the aforementioned paper, the SPD in particular is pushing for her to be excluded from the parliamentary group. “Then we won’t have a coalition,” said Berlin’s SPD leader last week on the talk show “Markus Lanz” in the event that Emde remains part of the left-wing faction.

However, expelling the MP is not that easy - a simple majority is not enough; a two-thirds majority is needed among the 44 members in the group.

However, the parliamentary group leadership around Elif Eralp, who could become Berlin's first head of government with a migration background and a left-wing party membership, is not yet in a hurry to submit an application for this. This was previously seen as a sign that she was not sure of a sufficient majority. At the beginning of the week it was said that the party should deal with this first and not the parliamentary group.

SPD leader Krach did not set a deadline for “Markus Lanz” as to when Emde had to be out. But he is not considered a big fan of a left-wing alliance anyway. He is also under great pressure from his own federal party and former Berlin SPD leaders not to form a coalition with the Left Party.

Now the CDU has officially extended its hand and invited people to parallel talks - together with the Greens, there would also be a majority in parliament for this, albeit only a narrow one.

The Greens and SPD rejected this offer with reference to the coalition talks that had just begun. But if the left-wing faction does not get going soon with its exclusion process or if Emde does not leave the faction on its own, remaining there will be the decisive lever for the opponents of a red-green-red alliance to stop it.

Meanwhile, Emde continues to provoke: She came to the parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday accompanied by a party friend, which is considered even more extreme.