Greens on verge of power as likely junior partners in new coalition

Yesterday's election marks a coming of age for Germany's Greens, who look set to be the third largest party in the Bundestag and the junior partners in a Schroderled government. Projections last night gave the party almost 7 per cent of the vote, an impressive achievement after a campaign characterised by blunders and internal splits.

Proposals to cut the German army in half and eventually dissolve NATO drew fire from political opponents and the media. When the Greens promised to triple the price of petrol by 2008 and to encourage Germans to take fewer holidays abroad, the government said they were unfit for government.

Founded as a loose coalition of environmentalists, Trotskyists and assorted radicals, the Greens became the voice of Germany's anti-nuclear, anti-US, anti-establishment youth during the 1980s.

The charismatic Petra Kelly was a new kind of political leader who preached a fresh political gospel that stood in stark contrast to the traditional parties' appeals to narrow self-interest. But the party soon found itself torn apart by bitter feuds over ideological purity and lost all its seats in the Bundestag in 1990.

Much of the credit for yesterday's success must go to the Greens' parliamentary leader, Mr Joschka Fischer, who is among Germany's leading politicians.

A former taxi driver and student radical who wore jeans and sneakers on his first day in the Bundestag in 1983, Mr Fischer has steered his party away from ecological fundamentalism and to wards a pro-European foreign policy.

The Greens are committed to deeper political and economic integration in Europe and to maintaining Germany's place in the western alliance. Mr Fischer could even become foreign minister in the next German government.

The Greens now share power in five of Germany's 16 federal states and yesterday's result places the party in the enviable position of being the only possible coalition partners for the opposition Social Democrats at a national level - leaving aside the option of a grand coalition with Dr Kohl's Christian Democrats.

Mr Fischer and his colleagues can look forward to tough coalition negotiations during the coming days. But last night he was in the mood to celebrate.

"Today is a day many of us have worked towards for 16 years. The Kohl era is definitively over," he said.