Climate in coalition “difficult”
Lindner expects “very quick” agreement on basic child security
08/27/2023, 7:42 p.m
The finance minister and the family minister have been arguing about basic child security for weeks now. In the “summer interview” with ZDF, Christian Lindner does not want to set a specific date. However, he expects the conflict to be resolved soon.
In the dispute over basic child security, Finance Minister Christian Lindner expects an agreement in principle to be reached “very quickly”. “I expect that we will have an agreement on the cornerstones of what should be done in the very short term,” he said in the ZDF summer interview. When asked about the cabinet meeting in Meseberg, which began on Tuesday, Lindner said he didn’t want to give any dates, but he said: “very soon”.
There has been a dispute in the government for weeks about the financial means for basic child security – especially between finance minister and FDP leader Lindner and family minister Lisa Paus from the Greens. In the dispute, Paus recently blocked Lindner’s draft law for the Growth Opportunities Act in the federal cabinet. Talks by Lindner, Paus and Chancellor Olaf Scholz were still scheduled for Sunday – but these were not crisis talks, but “work talks to specify a project,” said Lindner.
For him, the basic child security is not about a higher social transfer, said Lindner, but “that on the other hand we set a clear incentive for people to try to work, to integrate,” said Lindner on ZDF. “If that succeeds, it will be a good project.”
The key to fighting child poverty is education, integration and language training, Lindner continued. He again pointed out “that there is a connection between child poverty and immigration to Germany”. Incidentally, there is already basic security and it is not “about impoverishment” here, because “that does not exist in our welfare state”.
When asked about the climate in the government, Lindner said that this coalition was “difficult” and that “couldn’t surprise anyone”. But it is now a matter of the government doing its job. Regarding the currently low poll values, he said that the poll “which will take place on election day in 2025” is decisive for him – i.e. for the next federal election.