BERLIN, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- A widely-publicized government initiative in Germany to digitalize the country's schools could still falter six weeks before its official starting date, the Green party (Die Gruenen) warned on Tuesday.
Katja Doerner, the vice president of the Green parliamentary faction, told press in Berlin that a cross-party compromise on the issue had yet to be reached in ongoing negotiations. "We still have the desire to reach an agreement in the next two weeks, but so far nothing is finalized", Doerner said.
Together with state-level authorities, the government in Berlin plans to prepare schools in Germany for the technological changes of digitalization in a gradual multi-step process starting in 2019. The governing "grand coalition" formed by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU) and German Social Democrats (SPD) has already pledged to contribute five billion euros (5.7 billion U.S. dollars) during the next five years to provide technical foundations for the initiative.
In order to do so, however, Berlin must first change the German constitution to remove or at least loosen the so-called "cooperation ban". The law in question prohibits the government from co-funding education which falls into the devolved jurisdiction of the country's 16 constituent states. Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet does not have a sufficient legislative majority in the parliament to make such a change on its own and has hence turned to the FDP and Greens for support.
Speaking to press on Tuesday, Greens parliamentary faction leader Katrin Goering-Eckardt said that her party favored cooperation on education between federal and state authorities but also wanted to ensure that Berlin would be allowed to do more than just providing physical infrastructure in this context.
"Our goal together with the FDP is to ensure that investments are possible in minds", Goering-Eckardt said. The Greens leader noted that the latter had proven to be a difficult topic for the CDU and CSU in particular. While the SPD favors abolishing the cooperation ban, large swaths of the CDU/CSU parliamentary faction continued to resist a corresponding constitutional amendment.
