Epiphany meeting of the FDP – Lindner ignores the uprising in his party

New year, new luck – with this resolution the crisis-hit FDP is trying to deal with the year 2023. The gaze is directed straight ahead.

Stuttgart – Christian Lindner is injured. And quite literally. Instead of lying in a sick bed, he stands on the stage of the magnificent opera and speaks well to the audience – with a bit of a fever, as he says. The date, the currently heated mood in the country, in the coalition and in the party, all of this probably doesn't allow him to completely calm down. It is the FDP's traditional Epiphany meeting. A New Year's reception for a new beginning. To recover from the hardships of the past year – with a sniffy party chairman. For FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai, the rally is “balm for the soul”.

Dissatisfaction with the traffic lights is growing – in 2023 the FDP will be in trouble

In 2023 the FDP has added. The Liberals were completely thrown out of the state parliaments in Bavaria and Berlin, and in Hesse and Bremen they barely escaped with a black eye. Dissatisfaction with the traffic lights and the FDP is growing on all fronts. The scenes in front of the gates of the opera house are a miniature representation of the major crises. There, farmers are demonstrating against the end of subsidies, environmental activists are demanding climate money instead of a debt brake, another group wants an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, PETA activists are criticizing the FDP for a lack of animal protection, and the young liberals are calling for stock pensions now.

There are rumblings in the FDP. Although the slogan “Everything but a draw” keeps flashing on the big screen in the Stuttgart Opera House, not everyone in the party is completely decided. The FDP member vote to remain in the traffic light government was almost undecided with around 48 percent against and 52 percent in favor. Some people in the FDP are already proposing a German coalition with the Union and the SPD for 2025.

Uprising already overcome? Lindner ignores the FDP member vote

But instead of being addressed, the vote is only touched on. “I accept any criticism from supporters and members of the FDP that we cannot implement everything immediately,” says Lindner. In the sentence after that he comes to the CDU, from which he “does not accept any instructions”.

General Secretary Djir-Sarai somewhat flippantly praises the “incredible number of individualists” and the “great culture of discussion” in a party “in which even a district chairman makes a ten-point program on how a federal government should work.” So has the FDP already overcome the small uprising? “The FDP is a government party and simply has other things to do than concern itself with itself,” explains deputy parliamentary group leader Konstantin Kuhle to our newspaper. Thinking about other coalitions is also out of the question, “because now we are taking responsibility for the country,” says Kuhle.

“Liberal thirst for action: Lindner calls for FDP unity at the Epiphany meeting

That's why Lindner prefers to call for unity. All FDP federal ministers are symbolically placed in the front row. The FDP leader criticizes society as a whole’s “lust for ruin,” which he can “hardly bear anymore.” The FDP must rekindle its “liberal thirst for action,” says Lindner. He is once again clearly committed to adhering to the debt brake, promises to reduce bureaucracy and calls for an economic turnaround. Mockery towards Bavaria included: Markus Söder's (CSU) proposal to reintroduce compulsory military service, “garnished with a photo from his recruiting days”, has nothing to do with realpolitik. “This is romance.”