Chancellor Scholz copied his predecessor, but times are different. The fact that new elections are being discussed in Berlin is more than just a fantasy of the Union. The coalition is in a state of complete knotting.
Of course, it is part of the repertoire of the largest opposition party to flirt with new elections at the first opportunity. This is especially true when the incumbent government shows weakness, is divided and is discredited by large sections of the electorate. CDU leader Friedrich Merz is delivering what is expected of him: he attests that the federal government is in such a desolate state that it could fall apart before the end of the legislative period. And the question is not alone: will it really? But also: Is Merz right?
And you have to say: He has. The representatives of the governing parties, right up to the chancellor, can sneer a hundred times. The fact that the word “new elections” is circulating through the capital at the end of this memorable week is more than just the boring obligatory exercise of a CDU/CSU, which ranks a good ten percentage points ahead of the SPD chancellor party in polls.
The federal government is an unprecedented three-party coalition in extremely unusual times of upheaval. It is led by the chancellor in the routine mode of his predecessor’s coalition of two. Olaf Scholz copies Angela Merkel, but the times are very different in many respects. This can not go well.
And it’s not going well either.
The promise of a “new style of politics” that stood at the start of the traffic light has been crushed and crumbled. This included the mutual trust of the three parties that necessary compromises would not be permanently at the expense of one side alone. In the complicated world of three, it is precisely this trust that makes compromises possible in the first place. It’s gone.
Whether after 30 hours in the coalition committee in the Chancellery or after an emergency therapy session for three in the Bundestag like this week: after every “agreement” important points are open or they are opened again – and the trust among each other is worn a little further. When the Chancellor sells the agreement on the cornerstones or “guard rails” of the heating law as a victory for reason, one can only reply: A few more such victories and by the end of the year there will be nothing worth mentioning left of the coalition.
Without mutual trust, however, each side insists that everything is connected: the heating law with the planning acceleration law for wind power expansion, with the federal budget, with the CO2 reduction program of the transport minister, with the basic child security of the family minister and so on and so forth. But when everything is connected to everything, none of it is finally settled until everything is settled. The governing coalition is now in this state of complete knots with vanished trust. So will it soon break apart with a sigh, as not a few Greens would like?
It is possible. But not particularly likely.
It is significant why a premature end of the governing coalition is not particularly likely: less, because in the near future particularly clever and smoothly made decisions can be expected, i.e. a kind of active remorse for the whole botch of the last few weeks about the heating law. No: The government will probably stay together because the split would result in new elections – and would not bring anything good for any of the three parties involved. That is an unworthy bad justification for continued existence. Only “sticking your chair because of pension entitlements” would be even worse.
The problem is of course even more tricky: according to the current outlook, new elections would not help much for the majority of dissatisfied citizens. A new three-party coalition (then under a CDU chancellor) would all in all be more likely than a two-party coalition (the CDU/CSU with the desperately angry Greens). It certainly doesn’t look much more stable or peaceful than the current government.
Not only is the federal government dependent on the support of the people it urgently needs to win back. The people also depend on the federal government. You won’t get any really different ones that quickly. So not really better either.