Actually, the Greens didn't want to get their fingers dirty with the drones, at least not at the party congress.

The topic did not appear at all in the draft election manifesto, although it plays a major role in the security policy debates among the Greens.

The question of whether the Bundeswehr should purchase armed drones harbors potential for conflict for the party with its pacifist tradition.

The border runs here between the real and the left, that is, across the board.

Helene Bubrowski

Political correspondent in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

    But it quickly became clear that you cannot clear the subject off by not positioning yourself. There were three applications for the drones: buy them because they can help protect soldiers in action; Postpone the question of the purchase and first advise on the rules of use and the consequent rejection because the benefits and risks are not in an acceptable relationship to one another. There was hardly any support for the acquisition, and there was very little support between the other two applications: with a majority of four votes, the position that kept a door open for the procurement of drones prevailed. Of all people, Jürgen Trittin, a leftist, had advertised with the words that one had to "deal responsibly with terrible reality". Trittin belongs to the parliamentary group that recently reiterated its rejection of the drones.

    Management board positions refined

    On another security policy issue with a similar symbolic meaning, the Greens stuck to the familiar position: NATO's two percent target.

    The Greens voted with a large majority against the amendment from party members who consider the blanket rejection to be wrong.

    As a result, doubts about the reliability of Germany under green leadership grow unnecessarily, so the argument.

    But just under a hundred delegates saw it that way, 550 were against it.

    The party program speaks of a “strategic realignment of NATO” and a “fair distribution of burdens between the member states”.

    "We are committed to a new definition of goals that is not abstract and static, but rather starts from the tasks, and we will seek a discussion about this with our NATO partners," it continues.

    The charm offensive against the police also took a dampening over the weekend. For several years now, the party leadership has been pleading for the police to be strengthened, and the parliamentary group has been holding police congresses. There is even explicit praise in the election manifesto: "The police officers deserve our appreciation, as do good working conditions and efficient structures within the authorities."

    Apart from nice words, the green federal executive actually wanted to grant the police officers the powers they need for their work. But the majority of the delegates were against it. It was mainly about the source TKÜ, which is necessary to read out encrypted communication. According to information in security circles, it is said that 90 percent of communication today takes place via telemedia services such as Facebook, WhatsApp or Telegram, which encrypt messages from end to end. In the election program it now says, however, "the infiltration of technical devices (online search or source TKÜ)" is rejected.

    Thus the original position of the party executive was sharpened twice. Originally it said in the draft program that one wanted to "enable the police to infiltrate technical devices in a targeted manner using a source TKÜ based on the rule of law". The Federal Criminal Police Office has been allowed to do this for a long time, and last week the Bundestag created a legal basis for the Federal Police, which, however, from the perspective of the Greens, does not meet the constitutional requirements. The SPD has to accept sharp criticism for its approval of the law. For many Greens this was a deterrent, others sensed the chance to use the disappointment in the network community to make a name for themselves through programmatic adjustments.

    The draft program was therefore changed in the run-up to the party congress. Konstantin von Notz, the deputy chairman of the parliamentary group, had campaigned for it and reached an agreement with the federal executive committee. Now the “considerable constitutional concerns” with a view to the sources TKÜ should be in the program, but one door should remain open: “Here we advocate clear legal bases and mandatory compliance with the requirements of the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court.” Not for the police, but only for the intelligence services, the source TKÜ is rejected. But that went too far for the delegates, no matter how much von Notz asserted that with this positioning the Greens were a civil rights party. In the grassroots, skepticism towards the police still prevails.