CSU Bundestag Election Poster (1998)

At their Magdeburg party convention in March 1998, Alliance 90/The Greens adopted an election platform that included plans to raise gasoline prices to 5 Deutschmarks a liter over a ten-year period (“eco-tax”) and to impose a speed limit of 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour on the Autobahn. On top of these unpopular plans, Green Party Bundestag representative Hannelore Saibold stated in an interview published on March 22, 1998, that Germans should be content with one vacation flight every five years. As a result, public support for the Greens declined, and the party left itself open to attacks by the CDU/CSU and the FDP in the election campaign. But the CDU also didn’t have a consistent position on this issue, since a number of party leaders were thoroughly willing to discuss an eco-tax, including Minister of the Environment Angela Merkel, Saxon Minister President Kurt Biedenkopf, and Wolfgang Schäuble, head of the CDU/CSU parliamentary faction in the Bundestag. Nevertheless, as this CSU election poster shows, statements by the Greens were still used in indirect attacks on the SPD, their potential coalition partner. It reads: “Those who vote red (i.e., SPD) get green.”

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