page_title: Alliance 90/The Greens
section_title: 2005–present: Greens back in opposition
hierarchical_section_title: Alliance 90/The Greens / History / 2005–present: Greens back in opposition
caption_attribution_description: English: The graphic explains four phases of an evolving level of coordination within the G-coordination of the Green Party in Germany.
context_page_description: Alliance 90/The Greens, often simply Greens, is a green political party in Germany. It was formed in 1993 as the merger of The Greens, formed in West Germany in 1980, and Alliance 90, formed in East Germany in 1990. The Greens had itself merged with the East German Green Party after German reunification in 1990.
  Since January 2018, Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck have co-led the party. It currently holds 67 of the 709 seats in the Bundestag, and is the smallest of the six parliamentary groups, having won 8.9% of votes cast in the 2017 federal election. The leaders of the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group are Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Anton Hofreiter. The party is currently in opposition on the federal level, but previously participated in a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party from 1998 to 2005.
  The party holds seats in fourteen of Germany's sixteen state legislatures, and is a member of coalition governments in eleven states. Winfried Kretschmann, Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, is the only Green head of government in Germany.
context_section_description: For almost two years after the federal election in 2005, the Greens were not part of any government at the state or federal level. In June 2007, the Greens in Bremen entered into a coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) following the 2007 Bremen state election.
  In April 2008, following the 2008 Hamburg state election, the Green-Alternative List (GAL) in Hamburg entered into a coalition with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the first such state-level coalition in Germany. Although the GAL had to agree to the deepening of the Elbe River, the construction of a new coal-fired power station and two road projects they had opposed, they also received some significant concessions from the CDU. These included reforming state schools by increasing the number of primary school educational stages, the restoration of trams as public transportation in the city-state, and more pedestrian-friendly real estate development. On 29 November 2010, the coalition collapsed, resulting in an election that was won by SPD.
  Following the Saarland state election of August 2009, The Greens held the balance of power after a close election where no two-party coalitions could create a stable majority government. After negotiations, the Saarland Greens rejected the option of a left-wing 'red-red-green' coalition with the SPD and The Left (Die Linke) in order to form a centre-right state government with the CDU and Free Democratic Party (FDP), a historical first time that a Jamaica coalition has formed in German politics.
  In June 2010, in the first state election following the victory of the CDU/CSU and FDP in the 2009 federal election, the "black-yellow" CDU-FDP coalition in North Rhine-Westphalia under Jürgen Rüttgers lost its majority. The Greens and the SPD came one seat short of a governing majority, but after multiple negotiations about coalitions of SPD and Greens with either the FDP or The Left, the SPD and Greens decided to form a minority government, which was possible because under the constitution of North Rhine-Westphalia a plurality of seats is sufficient to elect a minister-president. So a red-green government in a state where it was defeated under Peer Steinbrück in 2005 came into office again on 14 June 2010 with the election of Hannelore Kraft as minister-president (Cabinet Kraft I).
  The Greens founded the first international chapter of a German political party in the U.S. on 13 April 2008 at the Goethe-Institut in Washington D.C. Its main goal is "to provide a platform for politically active and green-oriented German citizens, in and beyond Washington D.C., to discuss and actively participate in German Green politics. [...] to foster professional and personal exchange, channeling the outcomes towards the political discourse in Germany."
  In March 2011 (two weeks after the Fukushima nuclear disaster had begun), the Greens made large gains in Rhineland-Palatinate and in Baden-Württemberg. In Baden-Württemberg they became the senior partner in a governing coalition for the first time.  Winfried Kretschmann is now the first Green to serve as Minister-President of a German State (Cabinet Kretschmann I and II). Polling data from August 2011 indicated that one in five Germans supported the Greens. From 4 October 2011 to 4 September 2016, the party was represented in all state parliaments.
  Like the Social Democrats, the Greens backed Chancellor Angela Merkel on most bailout votes in the German parliament during her second term, saying their pro-European stances overrode party politics. Shortly before the elections, the party plummeted to a four-year low in the polls, undermining efforts by Peer Steinbrück's Social Democrats to unseat Merkel. 
  While being in opposition on the federal level since 2005, the Greens have established themselves as a powerful force in Germany's political system. By 2016, the Greens have joined 11 out of 16 state governments in a variety of coalitions. Over the years, they have built up an informal structure called G-coordination to organize interests between the federal party office, the parliamentary gr
caption: Professionalization of G-Coordination since 2007
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