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FDP party leader Christian Lindner (r.) And his General Secretary Volker Wissing
Photo: via www.imago-images.de / imago images / Mauersberger
Elections will only take place in a week and a half, but there are already thought games on possible coalition options.
Now the FDP chairman Christian Lindner has made the rejection of higher taxes and a relaxation of the debt brake a condition for his party's participation in government.
For the FDP, these are “guard rails” of a coalition agreement, said Lindner in Berlin on an “election call”, the content of which the FDP presidium had discussed and decided.
Lindner emphasized the ability of his party to compromise on other points - with a view to the possible balance of power after the federal election on September 26th and with reference to the weakness of the Union.
"We are only entering into a government from the center," said Lindner.
"There will be no leftward shift in German politics with the FDP."
FDP does not want left politics
As he said several times during the election campaign, Lindner said he had no imagination as to which offers the SPD and the Greens could make to the liberals that would be attractive to the FDP and at the same time acceptable to the social democrats and the eco-party. The FDP excludes higher taxes and a loosening of the debt brake as well as a policy "that relies on expropriations, which has bans in the center, that is, left-wing politics."
In addition, Lindner again pointed out that the strongest party would not necessarily form a government.
He pointed out that, according to current surveys, the Union and the SPD should expect an election result in the range of 20 plus X each.
That means that the next Chancellor "will not have been elected by more than 70 percent of Germans ... That has never happened before." Lindner's words can probably be interpreted to mean that he has formed a coalition with the Union under a Chancellor Armin Laschet want to keep it open, even if the CDU and CSU end up behind the SPD.
In Bremen, for example, the Greens had decided "to keep the cracking election loser SPD in government by bringing in the Left Party, while the beaming election winner CDU was unable to form a Jamaica coalition with the FDP."
FDP General Secretary Volker Wissing - in Rhineland-Palatinate in a traffic light with the SPD and the Greens - said at the meeting: "You can't just take a government in a federal state as a blueprint for the federal government." But he also sees the SPD at the federal level Intersections.
According to a survey, the Liberals are currently at up to 13 percent, the Greens fluctuate around 15 percent.
The SPD is still ahead with up to 25 percent, while the Union has a little over 20 percent.
The left is six percent.
(You can find the current SPIEGEL survey here.) A red-green-red alliance, a traffic light or a Jamaica coalition would be possible.
A continuation of the grand coalition under an SPD leadership is considered unlikely.
muk / reuters / dpa
