The History of Alliance 90/The Greens

Founded 35 years ago, in January 1980, the new Green party Die Grünen successfully entered the German Bundestag in March 1983. Ten years later, in April 1993, Die Grünen and Bündnis 90, a party founded in East Germany in 1990, merged to form Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance 90/The Greens). Data pertaining to all party conventions and key decisions, as well as all elections to the Federal Executive Board, are listed here; the texts of all platforms are available for download.

The double name indicates that Alliance 90/The Greens arose from multiple organizations.

An electoral alliance named Sonstige politische Vereinigung Die Grünen (The Green Miscellaneous Political Alliance) took shape in West Germany in March 1979 to offer an ecological alternative in a nationwide election – the election to the European Parliament in June 1979. It was not until January 1980 that the alliance became formally established as a party. Die Grünen took their first seats in the Bundestag in March 1983 and succeeded in increasing their share of the vote from 5.6 to 8.3 percent in the January 1987 federal election.

An ecological party was also established in East Germany in November 1989: The Grüne Partei der DDR was established at a delegates’ meeting of East German environmental groups in Berlin. The East German Grüne Partei agreed to merge with the West German Die Grünen as of December 3, 1990, the day after the first all-German Bundestag elections.
Parts of the East German opposition group Neues Forum, the Initiative für Frieden und Menschenrechte and Demokratie Jetzt, formed the alliance Bündnis 90, which was formally established as a party in September 1991.

After lengthy negotiations and a vote by members of both parties on a merger in April 1993, the first party convention of the new Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance 90/The Greens) was held in May 1993.
The policy objectives are stated in a “basic consensus”, which also replaced the basic policy statement of the West German Die Grünen from the year 1980.
The following list contains all party conventions of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen – mostly referred to as Bundesdelegiertenkonferenz (Federal Delegates’ Conferences, BDK) or Bundesversammlung (Federal Assemblies), starting with the first convention following the merger in Leipzig. The key decisions and the names of all members of the respective Federal Executive Board are listed.

A PDF of the listed decisions (in German) can be requested by e-mail from archiv@boell.de.

Policy principles: previous election platforms

The full text (in German) of all programs is available for download: basic policy statements and platforms for German and European parliamentary elections.

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