The coalition agreement was two days old when Jamila Schäfer was caught on the phone on Friday. It is done, “the last few days were even more exhausting than the one before”. But she is very satisfied with the contract and glad that the new government can now “hopefully get going really soon”. In the past few weeks, the member of the Bundestag from the south of Munich has helped negotiate European policy for the Greens. “All of our priorities came in,” she says of the Europe chapter. She is happy about the “turning away from the Orban cuddling course”, the strengthening of the European Court of Justice, more opportunities for legal immigration.
The week before last the European text was ready, but there was still a need for clarification in four places. These areas were marked green and yellow, says Schäfer, or red and green – the third partner in each case did not yet fully agree. Last Saturday there was a boss round, in which she met the designated Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Christian Lindner (FDP), among others. “That was an exciting day, you waited the whole time: when is my turn?”
Jamila Schäfer helped negotiate the coalition agreement for the Greens.
(Photo: private)
Practically nothing leaked out of the executive rounds that Schäfer’s SPD colleague Sebastian Roloff from Munich found good in principle, but also a shame on a purely personal level. Because he was harassed by his curiosity, what is now in the coalition agreement, until last Wednesday. Like Schäfer, Roloff is new to the Bundestag, but unlike her, not on the federal executive committee of his party, which is why he probably had to be more patient.
The paper arrived in his mailbox an hour before it went public. With an additional sheet, which party gets which ministry. He was “very nervous and tense” when he was finally able to click on the contract. His two Berlin employees were there, and now it was a matter of getting an overview quickly. “I read it in full straight away and was very impressed,” he says. And notes with relief: not entirely natural for someone who is at the head of the left wing of the party and now has the FDP as a coalition partner.
The big, exciting question of the weekend for the newcomer Roloff is how exactly the ministerial team of his SPD will look like. In the parliamentary group meeting he last sat next to Karl Lauterbach. Will he now be the Minister of Health? Roloff is not yet as close to the distribution struggles as Schäfer, who is not only the newly elected parliamentarian, but also Vice-Federal Chairwoman of the Greens. In the past few days, it was about the procedure for surveying members and filling the departments. “Those were again relatively long night sessions,” says Schäfer. The question of whether Anton Hofreiter or Cem Özdemir will get a ministerial office had led to a wing fight.
Two roommates on four paws and an apartment with “barracks charm”
In addition to all that, the start of the normal parliamentary life for the 28-year-old MP is again a bit short. She still held a few appraisal interviews. Her team is now complete, with the exception of the scientific collaborator: She only wants to fill it when it is clear which committees she will sit on – which should be clarified in the next two weeks. She has also been given two constituencies that she will be responsible for in the future: Weilheim and Altötting. From time to time she will hold events there and be accessible to citizens. She is looking forward to that, she says, it is important, as a city representative, to also consider the perspective of rural areas. She also likes to be on the go.
At home in her apartment in Berlin, she has had a new roommate since this week: a second cat named Elfie, who is now keeping the first cat named Momo company. The two four-legged friends really met each other for the first time on Friday, and on the phone the whole thing still sounds a bit like a wing fight. But they will pull themselves together. In the Berlin apartment of the SPD MP Roloff, furniture should first move in before he could take in more roommates. His fight with a large Swedish furniture store chain is gradually becoming more complex than the coalition negotiations. Company and customer have been talking and delivering past one another for weeks. That is why he continues to live in an apartment with “barracks charm”.
Suddenly the Belarusian opposition leader was sitting in the stands
On the other hand, he and his employees were making strong progress in terms of workplaces. He has already moved into his office in Giesing and also in Berlin. One can assume that these are set up better and faster than his personal quarters in Berlin. But that doesn’t matter, he says, he can only sleep for a moment anyway.
Maybe he’ll find a few minutes there to process the first impressions. In the past two weeks he experienced two extremely exciting sessions of the Bundestag. On the one hand, the representatives of the traffic light parties made the decision on how to proceed with the fight against corona. Roloff felt firsthand how complicated politics can be – and how difficult it is to convey.
On the other hand, he got stuck with the meeting about the refugees on the border between Belarus and Poland. Very suddenly and unexpectedly he realized that the opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya from Belarus was present in the stands, who is fighting against the dictator Lukashenko under the most difficult of circumstances. “Almost all the MPs got up and greeted them with a standing ovation. That was very moving.”