Lars Klingbeil recently expressed his irritation at how “playfully” some people in the traffic light coalition deal with political conflicts. However, the SPD chairman did not yet know what proposal his party friend Peer Steinbrück would come with on Friday.
CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel's former finance minister suggested that the traffic light should follow the example of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Of course, he was referring to Agenda 2010, with which Schröder responded to the high unemployment figures. But Schröder? The Putin friend? Seriously?
If only it were Steinbrück. But even comrades with a high level of responsibility, Greens or Liberals, are now kicking the trunk – or trunk – of the coalition tree almost every day with such force that the already sparse fruit falls to the ground and threatens to end up as windfall. At the moment the most popular contest seems to be to question the difficult compromise on next year's budget. Motto: It would be laughable if we didn't ruin what little agreement we had.
After the SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich, actually not a notorious rioter, had just fiddled with the debt brake again in order to loosen it, Green Party leader Omid Nouripour didn't want to be left out and compared the publicly demonstrated cooperation in an interview with the German Press Agency the traffic light partner with a “bar fight”. The claim that things have gotten better recently can only lose out in the race for the headline with such a choice of words.
Söder presented
In view of this mess, the Union is increasing the pressure on the coalition. As usual, the CSU, or more precisely its leader Markus Söder, had begun to question the durability of the alliance led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). But the CDU soon jumped on the bandwagon. For example, CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann recently advised Scholz that he should ask the question of confidence.
The CDU chairman Friedrich Merz – ever the statesman – initially sought discussions with Scholz in a small circle in order to offer help in solving specific problems. But now he doesn't seem to be relying on this option anymore.
On Friday, the chairman of the CSU regional group, Alexander Dobrindt, made a new attempt and said: “The traffic light experiment has lost its legitimacy. An appropriate response to this would be new elections.” He wonders why Scholz “doesn’t have the strength” to hand the decision about his policies back to the voters.
The opposition is using the traffic light dispute
Even if the latter would be ideal for teaching students what is meant by a rhetorical question, Dobrindt's call for Scholz to push for new elections is obvious from the opposition's point of view. The Union is using the dispute in the coalition to point out that it is unable to reach an agreement quickly and calmly on major issues such as a budget. Based on everything that the traffic light has demonstrated so far, this seems justified. At the same time, there is little risk that the CDU and CSU will quickly be caught off guard by an early election without even having decided on a candidate for chancellor.
Because there is nothing to suggest that Olaf Scholz will give up his dream job as Chancellor after just two years. That would most likely happen if he were to work towards an early federal election. The constitution provides for two options: The Chancellor dismisses some of his ministers, for example those from the FDP, because they criticize the traffic light course too often. He then asks the Bundestag for a vote of confidence, but is unlikely to get a majority. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier would dissolve the Bundestag, which would then have to be re-elected. Given the current polls, that would probably have been the case with Olaf Scholz's chancellorship.
Or Scholz did it like his predecessors Helmut Kohl (CDU) and Schröder, ensured in a vote of confidence that the factions that had previously supported him did not give him a majority and would thus have put an early election on the track. Exit? See above.
The Union still has a chance to return to the Chancellery early without Scholz's help. She must organize a majority of MPs in parliament to elect one of her own as chancellor instead of Scholz. But even if the FDP took part, the majority would still be a long way off. It is currently considered very unlikely that the Greens will elect a Union candidate – let's say: Friedrich Merz – as chancellor. There is no need to talk about the AfD and the Left Party.
Federal German democracy is very stable. Beyond a basic “you never know”, there is no discernible dynamic towards a coalition break. But the Union doesn't seem to find the situation quite as dramatic, if one takes the budget dispute as a benchmark. In Dobrindt's scenario for an earlier election, which he wants to take place at the same time as the European elections in June 2024, a victorious Union would then decide on the budget for 2024. By then the traffic lights might even have worked out.
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