As of: February 7, 2024, 11:55 a.m
By: Mike Schier
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Split
Stuck in the traffic lights: Olaf Scholz, Robert Habeck and Christian Lindner look forward to troubled times © Christoph Soeder/dpa
There are increasing calls, especially in the FDP, to end the traffic light coalition prematurely - although a break poses dangers.
Will economic policy become a sticking point?
Berlin/Munich – There is a sentence that Christian Lindner is currently repeating every day in slightly different versions.
It goes something like this: “If the Economics Minister and the Finance Minister are now both of the opinion that something needs to change in this country’s economic policy, then that must lead to political action.” The Finance Minister and FDP leader is planning a “new growth agenda” .
Foreign countries are “waiting for Germany to mobilize its virtues such as performance thinking, entrepreneurship and adaptability”.
The FDP is increasing the pressure on the partners in the traffic light coalition.
She wants to use the rare unity between Lindner and his Green colleague Robert Habeck to liberate the government.
And at the same time, it is building pressure to let the alliance collapse if necessary if a new agenda policy is not agreed upon - as was the case under Gerhard Schröder in 2003.
In view of the economic situation, the government absolutely has to change its policy, say the Liberals.
Unless.
.
.
Traffic light coalition divides the FDP: survey provides new fuel
The debate is not entirely new.
The party has been struggling for months.
The member survey at the end of the year documented the gap right in the middle.
52.24 percent voted to stay in the traffic lights, 47.76 percent voted to exit.
Since then, the surveys have continued to decline - the FDP in the federal government is now below the five percent hurdle at almost all institutes.
There is a risk of extremely unpleasant results in the European elections in June and the East German state elections in the autumn.
So would it be better to get out of the way now and reposition yourself by 2025?
The debate is fueled by an Insa survey commissioned by
Bild
.
47 percent of those surveyed are in favor of the FDP leaving the traffic lights, only 24 percent are against it.
At least 21 percent could imagine voting for the FDP.
These could be exactly the voters you need for the five percent hurdle.
FDP before the traffic light break?
Hagen warns: “A footballer who substitutes himself at halftime...”
But it's not that easy.
In the party, they still remember the exit from the Jamaica negotiations in 2017 (“Better not to govern than to govern incorrectly”), which plunged the party into an existential crisis.
There are many who struggle with the traffic light policy, but consider the damage of failure to be incalculable.
“A footballer who substitutes himself at half-time because his teammates are stupid and he is behind cannot expect applause from the audience,” warns Bavarian chairman Martin Hagen, who also sits on the federal executive board, to the
Münchner Merkur
.
“It’s better to talk Tacheles in the dressing room and then try to turn the game around.”
It's not just Kubicki who looks at the traffic lights with skepticism - question marks surrounding Scholz and Habeck
But of course there is also the other reading.
Wolfgang Kubicki is not the only one who sees “centrifugal forces” in traffic lights.
He often criticizes the alliance - but even he had advocated for it to remain before the member survey.
MP Frank Schäffler is also not a fan of working with the SPD and the Greens: “Habeck's proposal to reduce corporate taxes is poisonous.
“Actually, he just wants to abolish the debt brake,” he now warns.
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Olaf Scholz has long held back on the issue of corporate tax.
On Monday evening he slowed down and referred to the Growth Opportunities Act that had already been passed: “We should concentrate on that.
It’s practical, tangible and works quickly.”
However, the law is currently hanging in the mediation committee, where Habeck fears it will be diluted to a relief volume of three billion euros.
Then the effect would only be “homeopathic”.
The traffic light still has to clarify how the statements from Scholz and Habeck fit together.
Mike Schier