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FDP leader Lindner
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
Christian Lindner might think that it's finally running for Christian Lindner again.
For weeks, the FDP boss has been calling for a vaccination summit from the federal government, states, resident doctors and the pharmaceutical industry.
On Thursday in the Bundestag, Lindner was satisfied, as Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) was open to such an idea.
Similar demands had also been made from the SPD, which Lindner explicitly mentioned in his speech: "It's good that Mr. Spahn is taking this turnaround," he praised and urged Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) to to imitate the cabinet colleague and also to take up "other ideas" of the FDP.
They would then "not be sued for copyright protection either," the FDP boss scoffed at the government bank.
Lindner's good mood has a reason: Thematically, the pandemic crisis for the FDP.
The longer the crisis lasts, the more the government's policy comes into the public eye.
And this increases the chance of setting your issues and, as an opposition party, at least temporarily penetrating them.
Political outcry
Recently, Chancellor Helge Braun (CDU), one of Chancellor Angela Merkel's closest comrades-in-arms, provided an article in the "Handelsblatt" when he wrote about the suspension of the debt brake anchored in the Basic Law.
The result was an outcry in parts of the Union, parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus spoke of a "personal opinion," and the new CDU chairman Armin Laschet distanced himself.
Braun had to explain again afterwards and contradicted the impression that he wanted to abolish the fiscal policy instrument.
For the FDP, the dispute is an opportunity to bring itself into play as a financial alternative for voters who are unsettled and disappointed by Friedrich Merz's defeat by Laschet in the election of the CDU chairman.
At a digital parliamentary group retreat this Saturday, the FDP members of the Bundestag want to set an example - against the loosening of the debt brake.
»The demand for an easing of the debt brake in response to the Covid-19 pandemic does not even solve the current challenge of mastering the financial demands of the crisis with falling tax revenues;
Rather, it would pave the way for a renewed European sovereign debt crisis, ”says a decision paper that is available to SPIEGEL.
It has the pithy title: "No return to the debt trap".
FDP finance politician and parliamentary group vice-president Christian Dürr, who is responsible for the application for the FDP parliamentary group retreat, told SPIEGEL that Chancellor Braun had rowed back after his request to suspend the debt brake.
But his advance shows what thoughts the CDU is playing with.
“The Union has long since got used to going into debt.
The FDP parliamentary group does not go along with that, ”said Dürr.
His group thinks it is necessary that the debt brake should be "tougher".
"We now have to talk about where the instrument can be expanded," said the FDP politician.
A loosening of the debt brake, it is said in the FDP paper, would be a "fatal sign" to the other EU member states.
"Such a constitutional amendment would only be possible by breaking the international fiscal treaty that the federal government concluded with the other EU states in 2012 and in which all signatory countries have committed to introducing a debt brake based on the German model," it says.
"This would be a dam break"
If Germany gave up its national debt brake, numerous other states would follow this example, the FDP fears: "This would break the dam that would wash away the remaining budget discipline in the more indebted European states."
The financial policy paper is not the only thing that the FDP wants to advise and resolve on its retreat.
Topics such as education, digital, but above all how to deal with the pandemic should be discussed.
To this end, the FDP has invited two experts with different perspectives: The infectiologist Matthias Schrappe, who is critical of the government's measures so far.
It was only in November that the professor at the University of Cologne and a group of other experts published a thesis paper in which, among other things, representative cohort studies and concepts were specifically targeted for vulnerable population groups.
In addition, the FDP MPs will listen to the Göttingen researcher Viola Priesemann, who, as a physicist, created models of corona infections, among other things, and advocated tougher lockdown measures in December.
Lindner himself once again demanded a perspective for easing the corona restrictions.
What is needed is a "clear step-by-step plan" with clear "if-then rules".
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