This is a foul for the Frankfurt coalition peace.

The open letter that the Frankfurt Greens wrote to Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) and the government coalition in Berlin is a maneuver to calm their own electorate, which ignores the interests of traffic and noise-plagued residents around the planned Riederwald tunnel.

But now it's there, the letter demanding a moratorium on construction, or at least on the clearing of almost three hectares of Fechenheim forest planned for this fall.

The behavior is not incomprehensible, as the FDP complains in Römer.

It is a move that is rationally understandable, but which the Greens should have resisted.

And the reason for this is not just the coalition agreement, which states that the project will not be shaken: "The A 661 will be built and expanded in accordance with the current planning approval, including the Riederwald connection," it reads there.

Riederwald tunnel planned for decades

It goes beyond the treaty to something more fundamental: With their behavior, the Greens are showing that fewer and fewer interest groups will accept when a decision has finally been made in the democratic process, rightly so in a constitutional state.

A state based on the rule of law only works if this decision-making process, which has become law, is then actually implemented.

This is the case with the Riederwald tunnel after decades of planning.

Therefore, to compensate for the trees to be felled, around 12,000 young trees were planted in the Schwanheim district in 2018, which does not interest those who oppose clearing and expansion: They consider such afforestation measures to be questionable, but not their own protest.

From their point of view, questioning laws does not undermine democracy, but is its basis.

To invest around 600 million euros

You can look at this in a completely different way when you look at this construction site.

Probably around 600 million euros are to be invested in order to avoid permanent traffic jams in the east of Frankfurt and to keep the burden on the people living in the Riederwald district as low as possible.

Everything should already be done to prove to these people, many of whom now feel disconnected and no longer expect anything from politicians, that they can trust democracy.

The Greens in the Römer, however, ensure the opposite with their client letter to Berlin in Frankfurt.

The coalition round may deal with the matter next Monday, but the Greens in Frankfurt have long since achieved their political goal of selfishly looking at their own electorate.

In that sense, the stamp was money well spent.

For the many residents who have been waiting for the tunnel to be built for decades, it is a slap in the face.