The FDP has presented a draft of its federal election program.
The title: “There has never been more to do”.
The liberals criticize the “state piety” of other parties.
Berlin - The Bundestag elections will take place in September - and the FDP wants to go into the election campaign with an emphasis on individual responsibility and a modernization program for the state.
As the only party represented in the Bundestag, the FDP is about “not always strengthening the state”, but each individual, said FDP party leader Christian Lindner in mid-April when the draft for the election manifesto was presented.
The program should be discussed and decided at the federal party conference in mid-May.
The draft presented in April is entitled: “There has never been more to do”.
In the introduction, the FDP calculates hard with the state processes in the Corona crisis.
"While other countries have digitized their health systems, our health authorities have sent each other faxes," it says there.
"Highly qualified officials have typed up lists instead of using modern digital technologies to effectively track chains of infection." "It must not stay as it is," said the Liberals.
“The good news is: It doesn't have to stay that way.
Everything can get better."
FDP election manifesto: party leader Lindner calls Germany a "restructuring case"
In its draft election program, the FDP also calls for tax relief for companies and all citizens - including those on high incomes, modernization of old-age provision, a reduction in bureaucracy, a boost in digitization and a reform of the state.
"Unfortunately, our state has become a case of restructuring," said Lindner.
It is not digital enough.
The reason for this are their own rules.
In the federal election on September 26, the question is how the country will be shown "the right direction from the status quo", said Lindner.
Furthermore, the FDP thinks nothing of the “state piety” of other parties, but relies on trusting “the people in business and society”.
She wanted to give the citizens back “the pilot's chair of life,” said FDP boss Lindner.
Bundestag elections in September: The FDP wants to join the government
According to Lindner, the FDP presents a “concise, ambitious, but also realistic program”.
This is carried by the “spirit of liberality and individuality”.
"It reads well and it is suitable to be transferred directly from the program paper to the text of the law." It is also a central task for the next decade to modernize and digitize the state.
Lindner also underlined the claim of his party to govern after the federal election.
The FDP is ready to take on responsibility and is aiming for a double-digit election result, he said.
The Liberals wanted to become so strong that no black-green and also no green-red-red majority would be possible.
When asked which of the Union's possible candidates for Chancellor the FDP could better implement its ideas, the party leader pointed out that the FDP was working very successfully with Armin Laschet in North Rhine-Westphalia.
“We don't really know about Mr. Söder because he tends to give space to different ideas in his political work.” Sometimes one and sometimes the other topic has more weight.
"Sometimes it's about asylum tourism, then it's about bees, then it's about corona measures and curfews." The Union's election program will be decisive, said Lindner.
Education is an important aspect: FDP also wants to invest one percent of VAT income
FDP General Secretary Volker Wissing said that answers had to be found to global challenges such as climate change and to the “challenges facing our society”, such as demographic developments.
The FDP wants to fight climate change with the help of the “innovative strength of the market”.
The state must create “incentives” for “innovative climate protection technologies”.
The FDP also wants to make the education system in Germany more efficient with expenditure of billions.
One percent of the VAT revenue should therefore also be put into education.
"This enables additional investments of 2.5 billion euros," said Wissing.
Education is a civil right and a key to solving future problems in our society, the FDP politician continued.
“That is why the bazooka of our country has to be education again.” The question of whether something needs to be changed in the federal system in the field of education should also be considered “courageously, optimistically and without blinkers”.
Wissing also emphasized that the party was not committed to a possible coalition.
The election program was not an incentive "to start speculating on color," he said.
(
dp / dpa / AFP
)