In the Sunday question by Infratest dimap, the Liberals are at six percent, in polls from this week they are even on par with the LINKE at just five percent.
Five percent!
Within 15 months, the junior partner of the traffic light coalition managed to lose a total of eight percentage points nationwide, to be kicked out of several state parliaments and to resign from state governments.
In the event of new elections, the party would have to fear being thrown out of the Bundestag.
The FDP should actually do everything to maintain the coalition - but exactly the opposite is the case.
The Liberals are doing everything they can to push through outdated positions against their partners, even against what has already been promised.
Angry Greens are right to describe the FDP policy as "irrational" or a "transparent attempt to make a name for itself after several lost elections at the expense of European climate goals," as Sebastian Bock, Managing Director of the Organization Transport & Environment (T&E) Germany, explained put it to SPIEGEL.
Three examples:
1. Ban on new registrations of diesel and petrol cars from 2035
The planned EU regulation, which will ban new fossil fuel combustion cars from 2035, is close to its goal.
The European Parliament passed the ban in February.
According to this, car manufacturers should reduce the CO2 emissions of new cars sold by 100 percent by 2035 - this means a ban on the production and sale of petrol and diesel engines from this point in time.
The EU countries only have to formally approve it.
But since this week the majorities have been wobbling – also thanks to Germany.
The FDP has backed down and wants to block the regulation.
The justification is flimsy: the EU Commission has not yet submitted a proposal on how vehicles fueled with e-fuels can be approved after 2035.
This was part of the agreement last year that was used to persuade the FDP to agree within the federal government.
However, the EU Commission has never claimed to make a proposal before the vote.
SPIEGEL spoke to diplomats and observers in Brussels: Most consider the FDP's demands to be smoke screens.
To make such a U-turn a few days before the vote is political theatre.
"They had months to complain or ask for more,"
If the party gets the federal government to abstain, it could effectively torpedo the vote in Brussels.
Then the federal government would overturn what is perhaps the most important climate project of the European Green Deal alongside Italy's new right-wing government and some Eastern Europeans.
If the end of combustion engines tips over, the climate targets are in danger: according to Transport & Environment (T&E), the end of combustion engines would save almost two gigatonnes of CO₂ by 2050, which would currently correspond to the total emissions of European road traffic in three years.
2. Ban on gas heaters
Since this week there has been another climate initiative with which the FDP is trying to make a name for itself: Economics Minister Habeck and Building Minister Geywitz want to ban the installation of new gas heating systems from as early as 2024.
The Building Energy Act (GEG) is to be amended for this purpose.
SPD and Greens pull together, the FDP wants to block the project.
Their spokesman Michael Kruse spoke this week of a green “scrapping orgy of heating systems”, which “neither ecologically nor economically makes sense”.
Just as in the transport sector, very little has been saved in the building sector, and the climate targets are also regularly torn down here.
In 2021, the annual emissions permitted under the Climate Act were exceeded by two million tons.
3. The Autobahn Controversy
The argument about speeding up planning in the transport sector has been raging for the longest.
Last fall, SPIEGEL published the draft for a planning acceleration law.
A list was immediately attached to it: 46 projects, in which not only repairs are to be carried out, but also new ones and expansions.
Among them are many controversial plans for highway construction.
This in turn contradicts the coalition agreement, according to which there should be a climate check of road construction projects - and the renovation but not the new construction should be prioritised.
Here, too, the FDP is again on the climate brake: more freeways for individual transport instead of strengthening local public transport and sustainable solutions such as car sharing.
However, such concepts would make a decisive contribution to meeting the climate targets in transport.
In the cover story "From Fetish to Enemy Image", which is well worth reading, SPIEGEL writes: "The number of cars registered in Germany continues to grow faster than the population, 580 cars were last registered per 1000 German citizens."
The last straw of the fossil lobby
In the traffic light coalition, the FDP has become the point of contact for all those lobbies who see their business model in danger as a result of climate protection or who are afraid that the long-announced energy and transport transition will actually be implemented.
While climate protection has been done with non-binding targets, incentives and lax rules for the past 30 years, there are now for the first time concrete deadlines for the phasing out of fossil technologies.
That puts some on the alert.
But it doesn't work without such measures - the time for trying out nice solutions is over.
The reason is the climate law: the legally binding climate targets must be achieved in less than eight years – also in the transport and building sectors.
To put it slightly differently in the words of Andrea Nahles:
In addition, those involved have known for a long time that there are binding climate targets that must be met.
But they are clinging to the last straw of the fossil delay strategy: the FDP.
The topics of the week
Will the EU exit from petrol and diesel fail?
The EU-wide exit from combustion engines in 2035 was considered a formality. But the FDP and Italy’s right-wing government could still stop the project.
Will Europe's climate plan and the German traffic light coalition burst with it?
Wildfire study: Boreal forests in North America and Eurasia cause record emissions
Wildfires like those in Siberia released twice as much CO₂ as global aviation in 2021, a new study finds.
The danger: boreal forests could in the future turn from being a carbon sink to a new mega-emission source.
California Winter Storms: Is the Mega Drought Over?
Meters of snow pile up in the mountains, torrential rain fills the water reservoirs: California is experiencing historic winter storms – and a little relief after years of drought.
Negative record: Less ice in the Antarctic than ever before
The South Pole is currently missing about a million square kilometers of ice cover.
The minimum from the previous year was thus undershot once again.
Your own climate neutrality: How the UN helps us to lie to ourselves
The United Nations offers cheap CO₂ certificates for everyone.
Journalist Benedikt Dietsch tells in the climate report podcast how dubious the certificates really are.
"Noah's Ark of Plant Diversity" is celebrating its birthday: 1.2 million seeds, frozen for emergencies - on Svalbard
Seeds from plants from all parts of the world are stored in one of the coldest places on earth.
Thousands of samples are now being added for the 15th anniversary – including from Germany.
Stay Confident.
Yours, Susanne Götze
