Here is a very unofficial translation of parts from today’s coalition contract for the Federal government. Do not cite!
DARE MORE PROGRESS
ALLIANCE FOR FREEDOM, JUSTICE AND SUSTAINABILITY
COALITION AGREEMENT BETWEEN SPD, BÜNDNIS 90 / DIE GRÜNEN AND FDP
Foreign, security, defense, development, human rights
We will make our foreign, security and development policy more value-based and more European. German foreign policy should act from a single source and develop joint strategies across departments in order to increase the coherence of our international action. Together with our partners, including from civil society, we will work to preserve our free way of life in Europe and to protect peace and human rights worldwide. We are guided by our values and interests.
We want to increase Europe’s strategic sovereignty. The aim is multilateral cooperation in the world, especially in close connection with those states that share our democratic values. It is also about systemic competition with authoritarian states and strategic solidarity with our democratic partners.
Human rights as the most important protective shield for the dignity of the individual form our compass. The transatlantic alliance is a central pillar and NATO is an indispensable part of our security. Our soldiers make an indispensable contribution to the protection of our country, to peace and international security.
We are committed to reviving international disarmament and arms control. Our security and the protection of our livelihoods require global cooperation, a strengthening of the United Nations and a rules-based international order. In particular, we advocate a joint, consistent foreign climate policy and climate justice in line with the European Green Deal, the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement.
For us, working for peace, freedom, human rights, democracy, the rule of law and sustainability is an indispensable part of a successful and credible foreign policy for Germany and Europe.
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Development cooperation
We align our actions with the UN Agenda 2030 with its sustainability goals (SDG) and a value-oriented development policy. We advocate sustainable development, the fight against hunger and poverty, climate justice, biodiversity and a socio-ecological one worldwide
Object. We are significantly strengthening our multilateral engagement. We want to ensure that Germany fulfills its international obligations in the area of development cooperation and international climate finance. We will maintain an ODA quota of at least 0.7 percent of gross national income (GNI). In this context, we use 0.2 percent of GNI for the poorest countries in the Global South (LDC). In addition, the funds for international climate finance should continue to grow. The expenditures for crisis prevention, humanitarian aid, foreign cultural and educational policy and development cooperation are to increase as before on a one-to-one scale like the expenditures for defense on the basis of the budget 2021. We will coordinate the ODA funds more closely at the federal level among the responsible ministries to help them to be able to use it more effectively.
We promote food security and access to clean drinking water with sustainable agro-ecological approaches as well as knowledge and technology transfer, especially in the area of smallholder agriculture. German and European agricultural exports should not destroy markets in partner countries and we want to actively counter willful distortion of the food market through financial market speculation. We will make use of the legal possibilities to ban the export of certain pesticides that are not authorized in the EU for reasons of human health protection.
Together with trade unions, companies and civil society, we advocate fair and formal working conditions and living wages worldwide. By building social security systems, we want to actively support our partner countries in the fight against poverty. We also want to support an international financing instrument (Global Fund for Social Protection) for those countries that do not have sufficient resources.
With climate and development partnerships, we promote mutual knowledge and technology transfer, the expansion of renewable energies with independent added value and local uses, sustainable infrastructure and other climate protection and adaptation measures in our partner countries. This also includes measures to preserve biodiversity, to strengthen climate resilience, to overcome energy poverty and climate risk insurance based on the polluter pays principle.
To achieve the climate goals, we will invest more in the protection of existing forests and moors and sustainable reforestation. In particular, we are strengthening our approaches to promoting private and smallholder sustainable forestry. With their rapidly increasing urbanization, we will support the partner countries in designing and administering this process in a way that conserves resources and is climate-sensitive. We are strengthening the global health architecture as part of the One Health approach. The World Health Organization (WHO) is to be reformed and strengthened. We will expand the water, sanitation and hygiene supply (WASH), adequately equip the global vaccination alliance and intensify the fight against poverty-related and neglected tropical diseases.
We support the global COVID-19 vaccination campaign COVAX and strengthen it financially and through fast delivery of vaccines. We support voluntary production partnerships and the transfer of know-how to increase production capacities for drugs and vaccines worldwide. Debates about a fair vaccine supply.
We are strengthening our commitment, in particular, to basic education, dual training as well as continuing education and training opportunities as well as development-policy educational work by civil society in Germany. We want to use digital technologies to enable equal and free access to information and participation and to use this in particular in the areas of education, health and climate and resource protection. With the aim of mutual learning, we promote exchange and cooperation between innovative actors such as start-ups in industrialized and developing countries.
We strengthen the rights, representation and resources of women, girls and marginalized groups like LGBTI people. Equal political, economic and social participation, the strengthening of sexual and reproductive health and the rights of women and girls as well as unrestricted access to equal education and health care are central to us. We will develop a comprehensive gender action plan with the participation of civil society and fund it.
We are strengthening our promotion of civil society and the important role of trade unions, political and private foundations and churches, especially in fragile contexts. The important work of the political foundations with funds from the BMZ is to be secured and strengthened in the future, especially in the previous project countries. We orient financial support services for government-related actors towards democracy, the rule of law, human rights, the expansion of freedom for civil society actors and the press, and the fight against corruption. We will give more support to the European Democracy Fund.
Our goal is a new international debt management consensus. We support an initiative for a codified international state insolvency procedure that includes all creditors and implements debt relief for particularly vulnerable groups of countries. In order to increase the partner countries’ own income and to combat tax evasion, we will demand and promote lawful, effective and transparent tax systems that also include the financial performance of the elites.
We aim to simplify the allocation and funding guidelines of the BMZ and the Federal Foreign Office. We will strengthen the German Evaluation Institute for Development Cooperation (DEval) and the German Development Institute (DIE) as independent bodies. We will strengthen the cross-departmental evaluation of the use of ODA funds. We are reviewing the budget structure for special initiatives, BMZ 2030 and the list of countries.
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