Daniel Günther was re-elected Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein on Wednesday. The 48-year-old CDU politician received 47 out of 66 votes cast in the state parliament. The future coalition of the CDU and the Greens together has 48 of the 69 mandates. However, a CDU MP was missing from the vote.
During the course of the day, Günther wants to officially appoint the ministers, who will then be sworn in in the state parliament in the afternoon.
“I will carry out this office with humility and respect,” said Günther after the election. He spoke of challenging times and also thanked the FDP cabinet members who had left.
The CDU has 34 MPs in the new parliament, the Greens 14. The opposition factions SPD (12), FDP (5) and SSW (4) have a total of 21 seats. The AfD is not represented in the state parliament in this electoral term.
After Günther’s election, the constitutive meeting of the black-green cabinet is scheduled for Wednesday. In the afternoon, the ministers are to be sworn in in Parliament.
The CDU clearly won the state elections on May 8 with 43.4 percent and missed the absolute majority in parliament by just one mandate. The Greens got their best result so far with 18.3 percent.
On Tuesday, the leaders of the CDU and Greens officially signed the joint coalition agreement after the prior clear approval of both state party congresses.
Schleswig-Holstein is governed by a black-green alliance for the first time. In the past five years, both parties had formed a three-party coalition with the FDP.
Claus Ruhe Madsen, the former Mayor of Rostock, who is still non-party, will become the new Economics Minister on a CDU ticket. The newly tailored Ministry of Justice and Health will be taken over by the lawyer Kerstin von der Decken (CDU). She had held the chair for public law at the University of Kiel since 2011 and was a member of the Corona Expert Council of the state government.
The Greens occupy the finance, social affairs and environment/energy departments with Monika Heinold, Aminata Touré and Tobias Goldschmidt. With Dirk Schrödter – in the future in the rank of minister – the CDU also provides the head of the state chancellery.
