The contours of the next German government are taking shape. In a twelve-page document made public on Friday 15 October, the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Liberals (FDP) defined the broad lines of the policy they intend to carry out together over the next four years under the leadership of ‘Olaf Scholz (SPD), whose election to the post of Federal Chancellor is now a virtual certainty.
Basis of the “coalition contract”, the drafting of which should take at least another month, this document is both detailed enough to allow each of the three parties to claim paternity, and sufficiently imprecise for none of them does not feel too aggrieved by the concessions to which he has had to make. In short, a real German-style compromise, without mind-blowing audacity but nevertheless with some clear commitments which suggest that this “traffic light” coalition will bring new life after the sixteen years in power of Angela Merkel, without however fundamentally break with the centrist and pro-European line embodied by the Christian Democratic Chancellor (CDU).
Leading the legislative elections of September 26 with 25.7% of the vote, the SPD succeeded in imposing the three main promises made by the candidate Olaf Scholz: the increase in the minimum wage to 12 euros gross per hour from the first year of the legislature (instead of 9.60 euros today); the construction of 400,000 new housing units per year and the maintenance of the level of pensions.
For their part, the Greens (14.8% of the vote) obtained that the commitment of a “Drastic acceleration of renewable energies”. Two concrete measures are mentioned. The first is “The use of all roof surfaces for solar energy”, who “Will be mandatory for new commercial buildings and will become the rule for new private buildings”. The second is “The provision of 2% of the country’s surface area to onshore wind energy”, about twice as much as today.
Coalition pre-agreement well received in Paris
Regarding the end of coal-fired power plants, environmentalists can be pleased to see the date of 2030 mentioned in the document published on Friday. At first glance, it is a clear victory over the Social Democrats who, in order to preserve employment in some of their strongholds – in the Rhineland and in certain Länder in the east of the country – would have been content with the timetable set by the outgoing “grand coalition”, which has planned to phase out coal in 2038. But in Friday’s pre-agreement, the deadline of 2030 is accompanied by the adverb “Ideally”, which makes it possible to satisfy the Greens without worrying too much about the SPD …
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