As of: February 19, 2024, 5:30 p.m
By: Georg Anastasiadis
Comments
Press
Split
With the Greens or would you rather go with the FDP?
CDU leader Friedrich Merz is again looking for a potential coalition partner in the Bundestag.
A comment from Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis.
© Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Klaus Haag
The CDU leader was just flirting with black and green.
But now Friedrich Merz seems to be favoring the old love between the Union and the FDP again.
But what do Lindner's liberals decide?
A comment by Georg Anastasiadis.
The strange black-green on-off relationship has once again reached the status of “currently separated”: CDU leader Friedrich Merz, who first declared the Greens to be the “main opponent” and then a possible partner, is forming a coalition “currently” (yes out again.
Apparently the irritation in the Union and its voters about the rapprochement was greater than expected, especially before the elections in East Germany.
Instead, longing looks are now being sent back and forth between the general secretaries of the CDU and FDP.
Nobody is more made for each other than liberals and Christian Democrats, politicians from both parties enthuse in interviews. This is a remarkably different sound than in recent years, in which the former dream couple of German politics became increasingly estranged.
Now FDP General Djir-Sarai is whining again that he “doesn’t have to explain the basics of the social market economy every time” in meetings with representatives of the CDU and CSU.
Hope in the Union that the FDP will give up its partners SPD and the Greens
Old love never dies - especially now that hope is spreading in the Union that the Liberals could give up their current partners, the SPD and the Greens.
This is evidenced by the increasingly shrill tone used in the dispute between the traffic light friends.
In the current row over the asylum payment card, FDP leaders are unabashedly using the word coalition break.
Conversely, the Green Party's Robert Habeck thought it would be a good idea to attack the Liberals on the Siko in the open.
These are scenes of a marriage that now make a premature end to the traffic lights seem much more likely than a divorce by the voter at the regular date of 2025. With his demand for an “economic turnaround” a la FDP including citizen benefit reform - which is basically unachievable for the SPD and the Greens and austerity, Liberal leader Christian Lindner has already opened the door wide open to the coalition exit.
Even if there is currently not enough for a joint black-yellow majority, the Union is already waiting next door with a large bouquet of red roses.
Lindner just has to go through the door.
George Anastasiadis