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reThe Greens won’t like to hear that on their way to government responsibility: “There is no party in the German Bundestag that advocates socially just climate protection and the 1.5 degree target,” says Bianca Praetorius. “That is desperate.”
The 35-year-old Praetorius, “Startup Launch Coach” in Berlin, has always had his own method of dealing with emerging despair – usually founding a political party. After her first experiences with “Democracy on the Move”, she herself was on the ballot for “Democracy in Europe” in 2019.
But when it comes to the 2021 federal election, the agency owner has no illusions that she is in sight of the five percent hurdle. It is despair.
But Praetorius is not willing to give up: together with Magdeburg political activist Franka Kretschmer, who participates in Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion and Seebrücke refugee aid, she wants to “hack” the party system in the upcoming federal elections.
The “hack” is to unite numerous mini-parties under the cross-cutting theme of climate protection and thus jointly overcome the five percent obstacle. It is about “the merging of all potential progressives with the aim of bringing to parliament the socially fair fulfillment of the 1.5 degree objective,” says the call for the “united4bundestag” initiative.
The issue of climate protection comes “over the top”
According to the plan, small parties such as the Pirates, the Animal Protection Party or the pan-European Volt no longer present their own candidates, but instead ask for the election of the new meta-party. If the climate party surpasses the five percent barrier, a good 30 seats in the Bundestag would be guaranteed, which would then be distributed among the candidates of the participating micro-parties.
While the meta-party would then fight for maximum climate protection in parliament, individual members of parliament would continue to represent the vested interests of their original parties. All of this is “completely legal,” says Praetorius.
From the point of view of the founders of “United4bundestag,” the prospect of Bundestag seats should be quite attractive to otherwise desperate mini-parties. Since the issue of climate protection is “on the top”, everyone would benefit from increased influx.
It wants to address “especially the young people of Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, Seebrücke, Black Lives Matter, basic income movement, climatistas, German Zero, the party, animal protection party, pirates and Volt”, says in the call.
Source: Getty; WORLD infographic
“The idea of a promising joint election campaign is the only way to be effective and visible in parliament,” says Jessica Stolzenberger, activist for Fridays for Future and a board member of the BaWü climate list: “We must not lose this opportunity – it could be elementary for our future. “
The led parties are reportedly listening to the proposals with interest, no decisions have yet been made. After all, resigning from your own candidacy also involves financial risks.
The most successful of all the little parties.
According to the Party Financing Act, each party that reaches more than 0.5 percent in Bundestag elections receives a state subsidy, formerly known as “reimbursement of electoral costs.” This money would go only to the new climate alliance.
But if the new meta-match failed at the five percent hurdle, money would be lost for all participating groups. Because a refund of funds from state party funds to the original groups would be illegal.
So, to get more than five percent guaranteed, and because it is organizationally easier than founding a new party, the climate initiative wants to use the most successful of all small parties as a vehicle for its assault on the Bundestag: the one founded by the satirical Martin. Sonneborn. Party for Labor, Rule of Law, Animal Welfare, Promotion of Elites and Grassroots Initiative (The Party).
In the last European elections they got 2.4 per cent of all votes cast and multiplied their result in the local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia this year by ten to one per cent.
“We wrote you this love letter because …”
With an open “love letter”, the climate initiative is trying to catch Sonneborn’s hit fun party and convince them to smuggle climate protectors into the Bundestag like a Trojan horse. “In recent years, you have often been a ray of hope in these bad times,” the letter says. “Your satire not only shows the current insanity, it also reaches people who no longer have confidence in the rest of the party scene, it is the same for us.”
Then the rubbish is spread out over two pages: “We write you this love letter because we know that you are based on the same values as us and that we celebrate you mega. But above all because we need them, because together we have the potential to organize this necessary and historically relevant game. “
The party and its organ, the satirical magazine “Titanic”, could become “the missing piece of the puzzle of a new, diverse and creative protest faction” in the Bundestag. “It’s a great idea,” he says in the smear letter: “30 climate-friendly chaos sit, stand and jump in the Bundestag and not just in front of it.”
However, it is questionable whether climate protectionists are right when they believe they can see “the same values” in the satirical party. It is true that the founder of the party, Sonneborn, entered the European election campaign with the demand that the denial of climate change be subject in the future to “the maximum penalty for withdrawing the driving license”.
The Trojan horse for a serious and deadly climate policy
But this point in the program was on the same level as the demand for the construction of a German atomic bomb, the introduction of a subsistence maximum of one million euros, and the “reduction of gross domestic product to 50 percent.”
In the government program for the last federal elections, climate protection did not appear at all, but the demand for a brake on the price of beer did. The party also called for “managers salaries to be tied to bra size in the future to end the fruitless debate on the gender pay gap in management.”
Party interest in playing the Trojan horse for a serious and deadly climate policy is correspondingly low. WELT received a letter from the party’s federal executive committee to the “cadre.”
“For our part, there are no plans for a merger of insignificant little parties like ‘Pirates’, ‘Volt’, ‘SPD’ or ‘Urban HipHop Idiot’ for the 21 federal elections under our leadership,” says Sonnenborn’s letter to ” dear friends of the party. ” This is “completely impossible for reasons of time.”
Without the party’s workhorse, the “united4bundestag” climate alliance now has only the hard way to found its own party, including bylaws, treasurers and regional associations.
