At a recent meeting of her party’s parliamentary group, Green Party co-leader Franziska Brantner almost casually announced a surprise: At the meeting of all 85 federal Greens MPs held in Leipzig at the end of April, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the former head of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), was an invited guest.
“Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is president of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is working on the question of what we can do at this time to prevent society from collapsing,” Felix Banaszak, the Greens’ other co-leader, told DW. “It also requires political mainstream association.”
The Konrad Adenauer Foundation is a think tank that is nominally independent, but closely linked to the CDU.
CDU, Greens were at odds even a year ago
As of last year, the Greens and Conservatives were seen as politically incompatible – at least at the national level.
The conservative union of the CDU and its Bavarian counterpart the Christian Social Union (CSU) declared the Greens as one of their main rivals during the 2025 federal election campaign. After all, the Greens were in a minority government with the centre-left Social Democrats at the time, when the neoliberal Free Democrats left the coalition over a dispute that triggered early voting.
For several months, this statement by Friedrich Merz, who later became Chancellor, echoed in the ears of the Greens: “There is no leftist majority in Germany anymore and there is no leftist politics anymore,” Merz said while campaigning in Munich shortly before the election. He also said that he would not make policies “for the greens and leftists of this world.”
What is ‘Pizza Connection’?
Time has passed, and the Greens are now an opposition party. Some of the political storms have subsided, and there have been reports of individual politicians from both parties once again meeting regularly. In German political lore, the popular phrase for this is the “pizza connection”.
But what do German politicians from the Greens and conservative parties have to do with the famous Italian dish?
Nearly 30 years ago, in the mid-1990s, representatives of the CDU and the Greens, then arch rivals, met in an Italian restaurant in the western city of Bonn. At that time, the city was the headquarters of Germany’s government and parliament. Cem Ozdemir, now head of state of Baden-Württemberg, was one of the Greens politicians there, along with Steffi Lemke, who would later serve as German environment minister.
The conservative contingent included Peter Altmaier, who would later serve in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet, and Norbert Röttgen, a CDU foreign policy expert who remains influential today. Their goal: to find common ground and discuss differences.
Despite the phrase becoming German political shorthand, according to several sources pizza was never actually served at the meetings.
New talks on secret Berlin location
After last year’s soured relations, there is now a new “pizza connection” – this time in Berlin, as reported in several German media outlets. The participants and location are kept secret by both parties.
However, the Greens’ Brantner told DW: “The pizza connection has been around for a very long time, and now it’s the turn of the new generation. And it’s good that it exists again along with other channels of communication.”
The Greens and conservatives may be rivals in the Bundestag federal parliament, but in two German states, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein, the CDU leads state coalition governments that also include the Greens. In Baden-Wurttemberg, the Greens are the largest party and have been leading the state government in coalition with the CDU under new state premier Ozdemir since May.
Brantner said, “I consider it positive for our democracy if the CDU and CSU realise, and perhaps also Mr Söder, that the Greens are not the main rivals.” “However, that does not mean that I have any particular affection for Mr. Söder or Mr. Merz.”
Bavaria’s state premier, CSU leader Markus Söder, has repeatedly attacked the Greens during the 2025 campaign. Wounds remain, especially for those most targeted: former Greens Vice Chancellor Robert Habach recently took part in a panel discussion hosted by the news magazine. mirror And said of the CSU leader: “Markus Söder is one of those people I don’t believe anything about.”
Greens defeat SPD in elections
Although there appear to be many unresolved issues between the current leadership of the Greens and the Conservative Party, many politicians from both parties want to talk about whether the parties could work together more closely at the federal level in the future.
This is partly because the Greens have recently been receiving higher polling than the Social Democrats – the CDU/CSU’s current coalition partner in the federal government. This means that the environmentalist party may become increasingly important as a potential partner.
The Italian restaurant Sacella in the Bonn suburb of Kessenich, the venue for the initial negotiations in the 1990s, closed a year ago. But it has since reopened under new management as a pasta and wine bar. For Germany’s conservatives and the Greens, too, perhaps there is a shared future under new circumstances.
This article was originally written in German.