“Not at any price” – More than 1,000 SPD members stand against red-green-red in Berlin

In the SPD, protests against the left's participation in government in Berlin are becoming louder. Around 1,175 SPD members nationwide have now signed a corresponding call with the title “Not at any price”.

These also include prominent Social Democrats such as Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, the former Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach and the former SPD party leader Sigmar Gabriel. A number of members of the Bundestag have now also signed the text.

Prominent signatories from state politics include Economics Senator Franziska Giffey and the former state chairman and Neukölln district mayor Martin Hikel.

"We respect the election results in Berlin. As members of the SPD, we have serious doubts as to whether the Berlin regional association of the Left Party is capable of governing," the call says. The reason given is, among other things, incidents relating to anti-Semitism among the Left in Berlin.

Coalition negotiations between the Left, the Greens and the SPD began on Monday, six weeks after the election to the Berlin state parliament. A red-green-red alliance led by the Left Party is getting closer. However, the three-way alliance has been criticized nationwide for a long time.

The Left co-governed Berlin from 2001 to 2011 and from 2016 to 2023. This time, however, with her top candidate Elif Eralp, she could nominate a governing mayor in the capital for the first time.

The Left itself only cleared the way for coalition negotiations on Saturday with a vote at a state party conference. Eralp said of the criticism of her government plans: “We will not let ourselves be defeated, and I will not give up.”

Your party was by far the strongest force in the House of Representatives election on September 20th with 25.7 percent. This is followed by the CDU (18.8 percent), AfD (16.3 percent), the Greens (14.3 percent) and the SPD (12.1 percent).