There are times when pretty much everything succeeds, even in politics. Daniel Günther is on a roll right now.

state election won; then got rid of one of two coalition partners, the FDP, without getting their hands dirty. At the same time, almost in passing, the own black-green line was pushed through within a party, the North CDU, in which many would rather have made an alliance with the shrunken Liberals than with the pumped-up Greens. And coalition agreement negotiated without a single public scuffle.

So it’s no wonder that Günther looks very satisfied into the cameras this Wednesday in a side room of the Kiel Ostseehalle. One floor down, the old head of government, and from next week also the new head of government, let the “Helicopter 117” rise, a Ballermann song, in a wild election night, out of sheer joy about his 43 percent result.

Jetzt zelebriert er an fast selber Stelle zusammen mit den beiden grünen Spitzenkandidatinnen Monika Heinold und Aminata Touré die Landung, den neuen, in schwarze und grüne Buchdeckel eingebundenen Koalitionsvertrag. From the point of view of both the Union and the Greens, this has probably succeeded, as the leaders of both parties claim.

“What we wanted in terms of handwriting is fairly included in this coalition agreement,” says Günther, who, when asked, cannot name any point where it was really difficult for him to sign the black-green government paper. There is no area, so Touré expresses her satisfaction with the course of negotiations and the bundle of contracts “in which it would have become difficult somewhere”.

No one can immediately say whether things will stay that way between black and green in Schleswig-Holstein. In the volatile situation in which the federal and state governments find themselves in view of the Ukraine war and the Corona crisis, many of the projects agreed in the contract are subject to reservations anyway. The coalition agreement, no matter how detailed, detailed and devastating it may be, is above all an overly long-winded declaration of intent.

In the next five years, the black-green alliance in Schleswig-Holstein wants, among other things: “to provide more and affordable living space”, “to fight poverty”, to “create the best framework conditions for good entrepreneurial development” for the economy, to “ensure nature protect”, “support the farms” and of course “achieve safety for all people”. What you write when paper is patient and a political alliance that has just been formed is of good will overall.

Unlike the coalition agreement, the black-green cabinet list is not yet complete. Three out of five departments assigned to the CDU are not occupied by name. It is certain that the deputy CDU federal chairman Karin Prien will remain Minister of Education and that the current Minister of the Interior Sabine Sütterlin-Waack will also retain her office.

It remained unclear on Wednesday which Christian Democrat will take over the Ministry of Economics and Transport previously held by the FDP. Günther has not yet named a head of department for the new Ministry of Agriculture, which was pushed through by the CDU against the Green Party’s plea, or for the somewhat bizarre Ministry of Justice and Health.

With the Greens, on the other hand, everything is clear in terms of personnel. In addition to Heinold (finance) and Touré (social affairs), the former State Secretary Tobias Goldschmidt is to lead the Ministry of the Environment. The bottom line is that Black-Green treats itself to eight departments, one ministry more than the previous Jamaican government.

According to their own statements, none of the two parties had to swallow really fat “toads” in the preparation of the coalition agreement. Rather a few “tadpoles”, like the chapters on anti-racism and queer politics, which the Union would have preferred to avoid in this detail.

On the other hand, the Greens had to swallow a little when it came to the – limited – use of police body cams, including when searching private homes. “We would have liked to have done more for civil rights,” Aminata Touré had commented in the WELT interview before the end of the negotiations on the chapter on internal security, which from a green point of view was not completely successful.

The Greens, on the other hand, accepted the further construction of the A 20, which the Union classified as non-negotiable, in accordance with a new federal transport route plan, as well as the construction of the fixed Fehmarnbelt link, which the Danish side had already begun.

In general, Schleswig-Holstein’s Greens have obviously decided to shed the reputation of being an infrastructure obstructionist party. The new state government, which has a two-thirds majority in the state parliament, is intended to make it significantly more difficult, if not impossible, to stop major projects by referendum, as provided for in the constitution.

According to a so-called general clause, citizens’ requests and decisions should no longer be able to take place in the future if “the state government declares the project in question to be an indispensable prerequisite for infrastructure or investment projects of state or national importance for the supply of the population with important goods or services”. The same applies to projects that are required “to achieve the climate goals of the state government”.

Even in the case of “land use planning, which is a prerequisite for the construction of hospitals, schools, day care centers or housing (if at least 30 percent of the housing is social housing) or for the generation of renewable energies”, it should no longer be possible to prevent qua citizens’ petitions and referendums in the future.

Schleswig-Holstein, no question, especially the west coast, where the state government wants to locate a new regenerative energy industry, is to be rebuilt under the black-green government. By 2040 at the latest, the north, which is structured around rural tourism, should have become the “first climate-neutral industrial country”.

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