Photos via Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung on Flickr. Images have been cropped from their original size.
It’s Done
The 2021 Coalition Agreement and the Prospects of the Next German Government
After two months of intensive discussions, the SPD, Greens, and FDP negotiated an incredibly detailed coalition agreement. This 177-page document lays out a legislative agenda for the next four years and outlines which parties will control the various ministries. Everyone got something of importance–the Social Democrats will control social policy portfolios and the chancellery; the Liberals will get the powerful Finance Ministry as well as justice and transportation; the Greens claimed almost all climate-related portfolios and the Foreign Office. The document has the potential to put Germany on a much more progressive path, but will the parties be able to execute this vision? What tensions will likely mark this ideologically disparate three-party coalition? How will policy and personnel changes affect domestic politics, Europe, and foreign relations?
Speakers:
Heather Conley, Senior Vice President for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic; and Director, Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and in-coming President, German Marshall Fund of the United States
Isabelle Hertner, Senior Lecturer in Politics of Britain in Europe and Director, Centre for German Transnational Relations, King’s College London
Sarah Schmid, Head of Division for European Integration, Constitutional Affairs and Social Participation, Academy of Politics and Current Affairs, Hanns Seidel Foundation
Moderator:
Eric Langenbacher, Director of the Society, Culture and Politics Program, American-German Institute
This event will convene via Zoom. Please contact Ms. Elizabeth Hotary at ehotary@aicgs.org with any questions.
Heather A. Conley is senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic and director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at CSIS. Prior to joining CSIS as a senior fellow and director for Europe in 2009, Conley served four years as executive director of the Office of the Chairman of the Board at the American National Red Cross. From 2001 to 2005, she was deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs with responsibilities for U.S. bilateral relations with the countries of Northern and Central Europe. From 1994 to 2001, she was a senior associate with an international consulting firm led by former U.S. deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage. Ms. Conley began her career in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. She was selected to serve as special assistant to the coordinator of U.S. assistance to the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, and she has received two State Department Meritorious Honor Awards. Ms. Conley is frequently featured as a foreign policy analyst and Europe expert on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, and PBS, among other prominent media outlets. She received her B.A. in international studies from West Virginia Wesleyan College and her M.A. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Isabelle Hertner researches party politics in Germany, Britain, France, and at the European Union level. She is the director of King’s Centre for German Transnational Relations. Isabelle joined King’s in September 2016, having previously worked as a lecturer in German and European Politics and Society at the University of Birmingham. She was also the deputy director of Birmingham’s Institute for German Studies (IGS). Isabelle holds a PhD in European politics from Royal Holloway (University of London) and a MA in European Political and Administrative Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges. She did her undergraduate degree in Politics, French and Italian at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and spent a year studying at Sciences Po Bordeaux.
Sarah Schmid is head of division for European Integration, Constitutional Affairs and Social Participation at the Academy of Politics and Current Affairs of the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Munich. Her main fields of study are political reform debates on the German and European level as well as constitutional affairs in Germany. Before joining Hanns Seidel Foundation she worked as a lecturer for the Department of Comparative Politics at the University of Regensburg. There she also gained her PhD on non-state governance in areas of limited statehood and held a scholarship from the Elite Network of Bavaria by the State Ministry of Science and the Arts.
This webinar is supported by the AGI Harry & Helen Gray Culture and Politics Program and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is presented in partnership with The Aston Centre for Europe, Aston University, Birmingham, UK; the International Association for the Study of German Politics; and the BMW Center for German and European Studies, Georgetown University.
