In
politics, a red–green alliance or red–green coalition is an alliance of "red" (often
social-democratic or
democratic socialist) parties with "green" (often
green and/or occasionally
agrarian) parties. The alliance is often based on common left political views, especially a shared distrust of
corporate or capitalist
institutions. While the "red" social-democratic parties tend to focus on the effects of
capitalism on the
working class, the "green"
environmentalist parties tend to focus on the environmental effects of capitalism.
Red–green coalition governments
There have been a number of red–green governments in
Europe since the 1990s.
There are also red/green political alliances and/or electoral agreements between social-democratic or
liberal parties cooperate with green parties
In Canada, the term red–green alliance has been used to describe the limited co-operation between the
Liberal Party of Canada which uses red as its colour, and the
Green Party of Canada,[3] which is centre-left but not seen as being as radical as many of its overseas sister parties and take a more moderate stance than
New Democratic Party.
In Australia, the term red–green alliance has been used to describe the co-operation between the centre-left
Australian Labor Party and the
Australian Greens. The Greens supported Labor to form the
minority government in
2010. As the Greens is the third party in the
Australian Senate which hold the balance power from
crossbench, the Labor minority government needed to rely support from the Greens from 2010 to 2013.
In New Zealand, after the
2017 general election, the
Labour and the
Greens signed a
memorandum of understanding.[5] This formed a loose relationship between the two parties with the goal of working together when possible to unseat the incumbent
National Government. Later, the two parties also agreed to a set of budget responsibility rules, committing both parties to sustainable surpluses and capping debt, amongst other rules.[6] Following the
2020 election, a Labour majority government was formed, supported by the Greens through a confidence and supply arrangement.
In the Netherlands,
GreenLeft and the
Labour Party formed an
alliance during the
2021-2022 cabinet formation, vowing to only join a government coalition together. In 2023, the parliamentary groups in the
Senate merged following a joint election campaign. In the
2023 snap election, the two parties ran on a joint list, after members of both parties voted in favour.