Franziska Giffey elected Governing Mayor of Berlin

Red-Green-Red Senate
Franziska Giffey elected Mayor of Berlin

The new mayor of Berlin is now officially Franziska Giffey (SPD). In the capital’s House of Representatives, 84 MPs voted for Giffey on Tuesday, 52 against her and two abstained, as Parliament President Dennis Buchner (SPD) announced. The 43-year-old is the head of government in a new edition of the alliance with the Greens and the Left.

Mathematically, the red-green-red coalition has a majority of 92 of the 147 parliamentary seats. However, several MPs were missing from the secret vote on Tuesday. A total of 139 votes were cast, one of which was invalid. With Giffey, this is the first time that a woman has held the highest office in Berlin state politics. The former Federal Minister for Family Affairs succeeds Michael Müller (SPD), who has moved to the Bundestag.

Franziska Giffey: Elected and sworn in

After her election, Giffey was sworn in before the state parliament, after which the new members of the Senate were to be appointed and sworn in. The SPD will have four senators in the new state government, the Greens and the Left three each.

In the morning, representatives of the three alliance partners signed their coalition agreement for the formation of the new state government in the state library. The way for this has been clear since Friday: the left voted by a majority in a two-week membership decision for the coalition agreement. The capital SPD had previously approved the 150-page long paper at a party congress, as did the Greens.

The Social Democrats won the House of Representatives election on September 26th, clearly ahead of the Greens and the CDU, while the Left came fourth. The SPD then sounded out with the CDU and FDP, but ultimately spoke out in favor of a new version of the alliance with the Greens and the Left Party.

AFP