Friday October 22, 2021
Coalition talk at Illner
“There shouldn’t be so much babbling anymore”
By Marko Schlichting
The SPD, FDP and the Greens have started their coalition negotiations. On St. Nicholas Day, Olaf Scholz could be elected as the new Federal Chancellor. At Maybrit Illner, Baerbock and Lindner are two of the most important figures in the possible future government – and one who has to get used to the role of the opposition.
The coalition negotiations will be tough. And they should be over much faster than four years ago. It took almost half a year. On Thursday, representatives of the SPD, FDP and the Greens first met to set the timetable for the talks. In the end, Olaf Scholz should be elected Federal Chancellor. “The goal must be for a government to be in office during St. Nicholas Week,” said FDP leader Christian Lindner on Thursday evening on the ZDF program Maybrit Illner. There, among others, the Greens co-chair Annalena Baerbock, CDU foreign politician Norbert Röttgen and Lindner discussed the problems that still need to be solved.
“The negotiators approached the matter very skillfully,” praises social scientist Herfried Münkler at Maybrit Illner. The existing rifts, especially between the Greens and the FDP, were bridged by finding a narrative for a project that could be said to be wide-ranging and with prospects for the longest possible period. Christian Lindner formulates this perspective: “The conversion of a social into a socio-ecological market economy.”
Annalena Baerbock sums up her goal as follows: “There shouldn’t be so much babbling anymore. Things must finally be tackled.” The question of finance is likely to be the most difficult. There is already a solution for the pension issue, says Baerbock. In fact, the future traffic light coalition agreed during their exploratory talks that the pension insurance should receive 10 billion euros from the budget next year. In addition, it can invest its reserves on the capital market in a “regulated” manner. That was what the FDP demanded during the election campaign.
In addition, the possible new federal government wants to take money in hand with which it wants to finance projects such as the restructuring of industry, climate protection or digitization. Baerbock assumes an annual 50 to 60 billion euros, according to FDP boss Lindner that will not be enough. “Of course the demands are high,” said Baerbock. “But if we don’t change things radically, we will not be able to cope with the project of the century to create climate-neutral prosperity.”
Most important topic in coalition negotiations
It is not yet clear where this money will come from. What is clear, however, is that the debt brake should be adhered to. The FDP had also demanded that. However, the limit will not apply again until 2023. In the next year, the government could create a soft cushion for itself through new loans.
“There is still no medium-term financial plan,” says Lindner. You could take out new loans in the next year, but these should be used to compensate for losses caused by the corona crisis. Everything else is dubious. How it will go on cannot be said. One does not yet know how high the loans are that can be taken out despite the debt brake. That depends on the economic development.
Lindner’s aim is to bring the economy forward. “A prosperous economy makes more resources available to the state,” he explains. Or: the more companies earn, the more taxes they have to pay.
Lindner also wants to spend money that the last federal budget made available, but which could not yet be accessed. This has to do with planning and approval procedures that are too bureaucratic. Especially when it comes to planning building projects, for example, everything should go faster in the future. In addition, Lindner wants to cut subsidies. And finally – also an election campaign demand of the FDP – certain projects should be paid for by private investors. “In Germany there are trillion euros of private capital that cannot be used,” says Lindner.
For Norbert Röttgen it is clear: “Governing in the next few years will be tough.” 470 billion euros in corona debt would have to be repaid, and the damage caused by the flood disaster would also have to be added. However, he has no suggestions on how to do this. After all, the Union is in the process of preparing for the opposition.
“Don’t lose anymore in small and small”
And then Annalena Baerbock reveals a special strategy of the new government: “We no longer say what we want, but also how.” During the explorations, it was agreed that, ideally, the coal-fired power generation would be phased out in 2030. The previous federal government decided not to examine how far it would have come until 2026. But then the current government would no longer be in office. “We preferred that, we want to tackle it,” says Baerbock. This also applies to the phase-out of the internal combustion engine by 2030. “We have to proceed strategically so that the automotive industry already knows that it has to rebuild its plants,” says Baerbock.
Less than a week before the continuation of the coalition talks, the Illner talk show showed two things very clearly: There are two politicians from very different parties who are trying hard to talk to each other and who want to create something new. And there is a CDU politician who, although full-bodied, announces that his party has come to terms with the role of the opposition. But you really don’t want to believe him. It may take a very long time for the Union to get used to not being at the controls of power.