Jamaica parties caught in climate policy quarrel in countdown of exploratory talks

Germany’s aspiring Jamaica coalition parties still disagree on a range of key policy fields one day before exploratory talks for a new government are scheduled to end, Gregor Waschinski writes for news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP). “There’s a hurricane gathering over Jamaica,” Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy leader of pro-business party FDP said. Green parliamentary group leader Anton Hofreiter said the “hurricane” was because no progress had been achieved on climate protection policy. His party even had to “wrangle hard” for Germany’s climate protection goals, Hofreiter said, adding that the negotiating partners were not ready to make concessions even after the Greens had done so last week. The conservative CSU’s Secretary General Andreas Scheuer said the final round of exploratory talks on Thursday are likely to be “a tough nut to crack”.
In a separate article on Spiegel Online, René Pfister says the parties would not allow talks to fail “if they are in their right mind” even if substantial disagreements remained. The alternative to a Jamaica coalition would be new elections. “Who would benefit from this crash?”, Pfister asks.
The parties’ chief negotiators will convene on Thursday evening to discuss final positions on climate, energy, and transport, as well as on migration, finances and other disputed policy areas. After exploratory talks are over, the parties will decide internally whether they move on to official coalition negotiations.

Read the Spiegel Online article in German here.

See the CLEW article Germany’s aspiring coalition parties disagree over coal exit speed and CLEW’s coalition watch for background.