A Merkel Alliance With the Greens? It Could Happen

In the decades since World War II, Daimler AG’s massive factory in the German city of Sindelfingen has churned out millions of Mercedes-Benz luxury sedans and sports cars, often equipped with high-tech diesel engines. Many of those vehicles could soon face bans along the 20-mile trip to Daimler’s headquarters in neighboring Stuttgart under clean-air contingency plans by the state government. “The push for innovative technology in the German car industry starts in Baden-Wuerttemberg,” says legislator Thomas Hentschel, whose Green party runs the state along with the Christian Democratic Union.

Germany’s diesel scandal—and the response to it by Winfried Kretschmann, the state’s Green premier—illustrates the kind of politics Germans might expect if the party entered into a government with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU after the national election on Sept. 24. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and other top advisers to Merkel have signaled they're open to an alliance with the Greens in the likely event that the Christian Democrats don’t win an outright majority.