Despite recent election slippage and poll dents, Christian Lindner sees his tenure as FDP leader as a success story. He is also reasonably satisfied with the traffic light. After all, it is better than the grand coalition.
After almost ten years at the head of the FDP, Christian Lindner was re-elected at a Liberal party conference in Berlin. He received 88 percent of the votes. You can still call that a decent result, even if he was confirmed in office two years ago with 93 percent.
Lindner had previously given the 660 delegates an almost hour-and-a-half-hour speech with targeted attacks on the Union and dosed criticism of the coalition partners. Looking back over the past ten years, he drew a very positive balance. The FDP now has 20,000 more members than it did then, is doing better in the polls and is no longer an extra-parliamentary opposition, but a government party.
But what is even more important is that the FDP now knows what it stands for. “Ten years ago I said it wasn’t bad if the FDP was attacked for what it stood for. It was only bad if the FDP was attacked because it didn’t stand for anything. If I look at the attacks today – I think I delivered.”
“We are just at the beginning”
If someone at the top of the FDP had hoped that Lindner would indicate that this could be his last term in office, he was disappointed: the FDP still had a lot planned, “and I with you,” said the finance minister instead. “Together we are only at the beginning.”
With a perspective on the past ten years, Lindner set a framework that is significantly more positive for him than a brief look at the months since the 2021 federal election. At that time it reached 11.5 percent, a value from which it is far in the polls today is removed. All state elections since then have gone badly to disastrously for the FDP. However, Lindner can take credit for the fact that the surveys have recently been slightly up again. Apparently that’s how most of the delegates saw it.
Sharp criticism of climate stickers – and of Markus Söder
What was interesting was the varying degrees of differentiation from political competitors. Lindner attacked the climate stickers comparatively sharply, saying that blocking freeways was “nothing more than physical violence,” which should never be a means of dispute. But Lindner did not succumb to the temptation to use the Greens as an enemy. He tried the equidistance between metropolis and province: “Life with a combustion engine in the Thuringian Forest is no better or worse than life with a cargo bike in Prenzlauer Berg,” he said, for example. “These are simply free life decisions that both deserve respect.”
Lindner also did not use the nuclear phase-out for polemics against the Greens and SPD. He was only “a little concerned that we now have to burn coal in Germany to shut down safe nuclear power plants”. Although Lindner formulated his criticism of “redistribution fantasies” in the SPD and the Greens in a similar way as before, he did not attack either party head-on.
Lindner, on the other hand, accused the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder of a policy of “camouflage, tricks, deception”. In the corona pandemic, Söder’s “Team Caution” was actually a “Team Rule”. “The big tree hugger Markus Söder” has forbidden others to go out and hug trees. It is primarily thanks to FDP Justice Minister Marco Buschmann that a liberal pandemic policy was later initiated.
“They didn’t do anything themselves”
Looking at the past few years, Lindner spoke of an “unsound CDU financial policy” and accused the Union of making it easy on climate policy. “They did almost nothing themselves when they were responsible. And now they’re on the fringes in the opposition, don’t make any suggestions of their own, just say ‘bad’ and ‘can’t’. We can’t make it that easy for ourselves. Because we are responsible.”
Lindner criticized the CDU’s latest tax policy plans as dubious. The Union does not demand the heavier burden on top earners out of charity in order to give the FDP a unique selling point. Rather, it is “further black-green loosening exercises”.
Lindner described the FDP as a progressive party between left and conservatives: “We fight for the value of freedom, for economic reason, fair life chances and a modern, non-left Germany.” The implicit message of such statements: SPD and Greens are difficult partners, but it would not be better with the Union.
Remembering Merkel’s last night session
Lindner expressly recalled “the last marathon meeting of the grand coalition”, which ended with the Easter rest, which was then immediately canceled again, “and a deposed head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution should become State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior”. What was meant was Hans-Georg Maassen, against whom the CDU has now initiated party exclusion proceedings. “Sometimes it takes a long time for us,” said Lindner about the traffic light coalition committee at the end of March, “but after 30 hours there are faster motorway projects, a climate protection law with a market economy, investments in the railway infrastructure and other things. I can only say, with us At least it’s worth the wait, because better things come out of it.”
Lindner demanded more money from his coalition partners for the planned share pension, and he also presented the sector goals in climate policy as having been overcome – i.e. the responsibility for reducing CO2 emissions in individual areas such as transport or industry, which should be strictly assigned to ministries. Lindner’s reasoning: Sector targets would require political measures that are unpopular and unnecessary. If Transport Minister Volker Wissing does not meet all the targets in his sector, in a few years time “we will have to think about driving bans – if you don’t have an electric car, you will be banned from driving on Sunday”. However, not everyone in the coalition shares his interpretation that the sector targets have been overcome.
And otherwise there is enough material for conflicts. Regarding the controversial building energy law, Lindner said that the current draft is not what will ultimately be decided by the Bundestag. He rejected criticism of his protocol statement. This is “a normal procedure” that you choose when deadlines are imminent. “Colleague Baerbock” also did the same when drafting the 2023 budget.
Lindner no longer speaks Chinese
Regarding the Russian war against Ukraine, Lindner said that those who are not now on the side of Ukraine “are on the wrong side of history”. Germany is doing its part to ensure that “Ukraine’s staying power is permanently greater than Putin’s malice.”
After Lindner had stood in front of Chinese lettering and spoken Chinese in his speech at the party conference four years ago, he now said that China is now a “systemic rival”. This goes further than the classic description of “partner, competitor, systemic rival” that is common in the EU and to which the federal government also orientates itself. The “velvet paws” of previous federal governments against China were a mistake, “it should never give the impression that we let our liberal values be bought off of us for good business”. He praised his party colleague, Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger, who recently became the first member of a federal cabinet to visit Taiwan, “because for us, freedom is indivisible.”