The Path to Power in Post-Merkel Germany Is Getting Greener

(Bloomberg) -- In a Berlin pizza parlor, a secretive group of politicians is drawing up a plan to put climate policy at the center of the next German government.

The network, half-jokingly known as the Pizza Connection, has spent years honing proposals for an unprecedented coalition between Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and Germany’s increasingly powerful Greens. With the chancellor due to step down in little over a year, the group senses that their time may be arriving.

“There is no alternative to a Green government,” said Juergen Falter, professor of politics at the University of Mainz.

As politicians across Europe wrestle with the decline of traditional parties and the challenges of climate change, Green movements are emerging as serious contenders for government across the continent. They’ve formed a coalition in Austria, are reshaping European Union policies and are poised to define Europe’s biggest economy in the post-Merkel era.

The Greens are second only to her CDU-led bloc in national polls and underscored their growing influence by doubling support in Hamburg elections late last month. Across the rest of Europe too, officials are preparing to work with the German Greens.

In a back room at the Munich Security Conference last month, French President Emmanuel Macron met with Green party leaders Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock for three hours, an unusually long audience for a pair of opposition lawmakers.

The French leader spent much of his time with the two Greens pressing them for their views on strategic challenges to Europe like the western Balkans and Syria, according to a person briefed on the conversation. It seemed like the French leader was testing the duo, said the party official asking not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the talks.

For the Greens, the Macron meeting was part of a strategy to raise their profile beyond Germany’s borders and to show their environment-focused approach can address the full range of political challenges.

Before Munich, Habeck -- a stubble-cheeked writer -- was in Washington talking about the need for companies and politicians to protect the planet and about how a new global economy can emerge around climate-friendly policies. In January, he made his first visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“We have this cliche that the Greens, because they are the Greens, they are for the trees and the weather,” Habeck told Bloomberg News in Davos. “That’s not true anymore.”

With Merkel’s party in the midst of a power struggle following the resignation of her chosen successor, the Greens are presented with a historic opportunity. Building on the Pizza Connection, they’re in position to form a coalition with the conservatives, cementing ties that have been decades in the making.

Some 25 years ago, a small group of Greens began to meet with their Christian Democratic counterparts in an Italian restaurant in Germany’s then-capital Bonn. The meetings have taken place periodically ever since, building a rapport between the groups and quietly establishing common ground for a possible alliance.

Secret Roster

There are now 15 members from each party involved, and while the roster of attendees is secret, high-ranking CDU members have taken part, including Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, Health Minister Jens Spahn and General Secretary Paul Ziemiak, according to people familiar with the gatherings.

“What we discuss inside the room stays inside the room,” said Silvia Breher, a CDU lawmaker who has participated in the meetings.

When the Pizza Connection started, the idea that the Greens and the CDU could one day form a government was unthinkable for the general public and conservative bigwigs. The Christian Democrats were the venerable party that had led Germany throughout much of its post-war reconstruction and reunited East and West.

The Greens arose from the anti-nuclear movement and the left-wing fringe. Joschka Fischer -- foreign minister under Gerhard Schroeder, the one and only time the Greens played a role in national government -- admitted to beating a policeman during militant protests in the 1970s.

Since Merkel came to power in 2005, the Greens have steadily moved closer to the CDU, shifting more to the center as environmental concerns become mainstream. By 2013, the idea of a coalition started to take hold among the leadership and base of both parties, and the frequency of Pizza Connection meetings was stepped up.

Close Call

Things were almost ready after the 2017 election, when Merkel sought to form a three-way alliance with the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats. But the talks collapsed after the FDP pulled out, and Merkel was forced to revive the unpopular “grand” coalition with the Social Democrats.

Still, the aborted negotiations demonstrated to Christian Democratic leaders that they could work with the Greens when it counted, anchoring the idea in Berlin power circles that the two would be natural partners after the next election.

The ties have held in day-to-day politics since. In a vote on Brexit in February, the Greens backed the ruling coalition, while the FDP opposed. Such gestures of support have been well-received by conservative lawmakers as a sign that the party can suspend ideological dogma.

“The Greens backing of our Brexit motion and other steps show that they are acting more and more responsibly and getting ready to take on government responsibility” under the CDU, said Juergen Hardt, a high-ranking Christian Democratic lawmaker who is a supporter of the Pizza Connection. “The coalition talks in 2017 have proven that there is common ground.”

To be sure, a workable governing coalition is a far cry from chatting over pizza and pasta, and the recent surge in Green support risks collapsing if climate change disappears from the headlines. But in Berlin, the question for now is less about whether the Greens will be in government, and more about whether they’ll be governing with the CDU.

While Merkel’s party is struggling to hold on to supporters, the Greens are gaining under Baerbock and Habeck -- one of the country’s most popular politicians. That means the environmental group could even nip in and take the chancellery for themselves in a coalition with the Social Democrats and the anti-capitalist Left party.

“They don’t want to sit on the opposition benches anymore,” said Falter, the politics professor from Mainz. “The Greens are ready to govern.”

--With assistance from Patrick Donahue.

To contact the reporters on this story: Birgit Jennen in Berlin at bjennen1@bloomberg.net;Brian Parkin in Berlin at bparkin@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, ;Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Chris Reiter, Raymond Colitt

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