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The fate of large coalitions does not necessarily decide on big questions. As evidence of this, the political end of poor SPD Chancellor Hermann Müller has been handed around for some time, whose Grand Coalition collapsed in 1930 in the dispute over contributions to unemployment insurance. In retrospect, this end is so bitter because we know what came afterwards.
This fall, therefore, the fate of a Grand Coalition depended on whether and how senior citizens with small pensions should be awarded a contract after a long working life. After months of negotiations, sweeping demands of the Social Democrats and a certain stubbornness on the Union side, announced the three party leaders on Sunday their basic pension compromise. Coalition saved for the time being.
Better than SPD or Union pure
The rather small techni - ceutical pension issue had become a major issue for the Alliance through the intervention of the SPD and the CDU (not so much the CSU). Tactic overlay content. The uprooted conflict could have blown up the coalition. Small charge, big impact.
That this has not happened now speaks - irony of this dispute - for the functioning of the coalition. The compromise is not bad, on the contrary.
This basic pension compromise is better than the original proposals, better than SPD or Union pure: Who works for more than three decades and pays, which has earned respect and a corresponding pension. That's what the SPD wanted. The income situation must be taken into account. So it wanted CDU and CSU. Among other things, the proceeds from the planned financial transaction tax will be used to finance the project. Fits.
No one and no one could want the break
The fact that such a reasonable result after so much unfortunate tactics can arise also has to do with the overlapping motivations of the three party leaders: Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Malu Dreyer and Markus Söder want - at least for the time being - no break of the coalition.
Kramp-Karrenbauer not because she has clarified the leadership question in the CDU by no means and the chancellor candidate by no means safe;
Söder not, because he needs rest in Berlin to bring the still fighting with less than 40 percent in the polls CSU in Bavaria mannerly through the local elections in March;
Dreyer not because she wants to save as a representative of the government Social Democracy, the coalition on the December Party Congress of the SPD - and because she knows well what new elections would leave her party still left.
The wrong time
Now this is how it is with the Grand Coalition: their education two years ago was a great misfortune - not for the country, but for at least two of the three parties involved. Ironically, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, one of ten failed SPD chancellor candidates, pushed the Social Democrats after the end of the Jamaica negotiations in the GroKo cellar, from which they can not find out since.
Perhaps the SPD would have had the opportunity to escape last year, during the tormenting dispute of the Union Party on the refugee issue, in the scramble for the former Chief of the Defense Hans-Georg Maassen, after the electoral failures in Hesse and Bavaria. Did not use it.
Today things are different. The continuation of the GroKo is currently no misfortune. Not for the land, not for the parties that support them. This is especially true for CDU and SPD. In new elections, these two would be the first losers.
Wait a minute: afraid of new elections? Can it even exist in a democracy?
No, it's not allowed. However, no party in the literal sense should go headless into an election campaign. If you want to get out of GroKo, you need an exit strategy. And he also needs conceptually and intellectually prepared coalition alternatives, whether Jamaica or red-red-green or whatever. At the moment nobody has these options in the hindquarters.
Least of all the SPD. For what kind of signal would that be: a party that makes it clear that it no longer wants to govern? Almost out of disappointment with the voter? Who should please vote for then?
Not with those again
So it takes an effective exit strategy. Angela Merkel has already formulated one, at the latest in 2021 should be over for them. Not only the SPD - which it already does in large parts - could take this example, but also the Union as an example. Do not be afraid of exclusionary disease. If the Union and the SPD definitely reject another alliance after the next general election, that can only benefit everyone.
By the way, this is how the first GroKo came along. A formal coalition agreement did not exist in 1966, but Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger set the framework in his first government declaration: He spoke of a coalition "only for a time, that is, until the end of this legislature period." This would not hinder the partners "to handle all important tasks with the utmost determination".
Such a government statement on the current GroKo halftime sounds good.