Berlin’s exploratory coalition talks hit a wall just as Steffen Krach tried to define who counts as democratic.
Steffen Krach wanted to become Berlin’s governing mayor with the SPD. Berlin had other plans. His party finished with 12.1 percent, in fifth place. Krach himself missed out on a direct mandate and entered the Abgeordnetenhaus via the party list.
And yet he now sits at the table when the next government is being negotiated. That is entirely legitimate in parliamentary terms. It does, however, require a certain modesty when the lead candidate of a party so decisively rebuked at the polls then explains to the public who belongs to the democratic camp.
“Here before you stand three democratic parties,” Krach said of the Left, the Greens, and the SPD. Equating the Left Party with the AfD, he said, was “absolutely wrong.”
You do not have to support the AfD to object here. Democratic criticism does not become indecent just because the wrong people happen to ask a similar question. And the history of the Left does not disappear simply because Steffen Krach needs its votes for a governing majority.
The Left Party today is a lawfully constituted and democratically elected party. That is a statement about its current legal status, not a blanket pardon for its political origins. Its lineage runs through the PDS back to the SED — the state party under whose rule people were imprisoned and persecuted under its rule, while others were killed attempting to cross the inner-German border. Speaking about that does not attack democracy. It recalls its precondition: that state injustice must neither be forgotten nor retroactively softened.
Berlin’s Left also gives rise to questions on its own. After the events surrounding Ferat Koçak, Krach demanded that he be expelled from the parliamentary group in the Bundestag. So the problem is clearly recognized. It is only not supposed to touch the democratic reliability of the coalition partner now being courted.
Meanwhile, the public prosecutor’s office in Hanover is investigating Krach. Among other things, the case concerns an initial suspicion of accepting an advantage in two instances and possible violations connected to a procurement procedure. Krach rejects the allegations. For him, the presumption of innocence applies — of course, and without reservation.
Likewise, it is entirely fair to ask whether a politician in this position is the right man to lecture others about democratic reliability. Parliamentary immunity is not an acquittal, a list mandate is not a moral clean bill of health, and taking part in exploratory coalition talks does not rewrite the election result after the fact.
Maybe democracy is made precisely where such contradictions are not swept under the rug of a future coalition. And maybe politicians who finished in fifth place should first explain what they themselves have understood — before explaining the world to everyone else.
+++ BREAKING NEWS +++
October 14, 2026
No sooner had Steffen Krach certified the democratic credentials of his preferred coalition partner than the SPD and the Greens found themselves compelled to suspend exploratory talks with that very party.
The immediate trigger was the Berlin Left Party’s decision to admit Vanessa Emde to its new parliamentary group in the Abgeordnetenhaus. Emde has faced criticism for anti-Israel positions and is reported to have questioned Israel’s right to exist. At the Left Party’s election-night gathering in Neukölln, she was also photographed with the controversial activist Ibrahim Ibrahim, who is alleged to have ties to the PFLP. The European Union designates the PFLP as a terrorist organization.
According to reports, the Left Party, the Greens, and the SPD had previously agreed that Emde would not become part of the new Left parliamentary group. By admitting her, the party appears to have challenged not only Krach’s declaration of its democratic credentials, but also the reliability of the understandings reached so far.
The talks have currently been suspended, not terminated altogether.
To be continued. Probably sooner than Steffen Krach would like.
- Tagesschau — Berliner SPD will mit Linken und Grünen sondieren
- Deutschlandfunk — Staatsanwaltschaft Hannover zu Berliner SPD-Spitzenkandidat Krach: Anfangsverdacht auf Vorteilsannahme
- rbb24 — Berliner SPD-Spitzenkandidat: Staatsanwaltschaft Hannover ermittelt gegen Steffen Krach
- Deutschlandfunk — Grüne und SPD in Berlin unterbrechen Sondierungen mit Linken
- Die Linke Fraktion im Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin — Unsere Abgeordneten
Author: David Stern
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Historische Aussagen wurden, soweit
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