Wednesday October 27, 2021
Talking Scholz, Baerbock, Lindner
It’s getting scary
From Volker Petersen
It was timely for the IG BCE union to invite Scholz, Baerbock and Lindner to their congress – on the same day that the coalition negotiations start in Berlin. The appearances of the three send a clear signal.
No, the traffic light is not through yet. There is still a lot of disagreement: the question of when the coal phase-out will come. Or how the plans of the SPD, Greens and FDP should actually be financed. Or according to parity, i.e. the number of women in the cabinet, which has only just made headlines again. And of course the classic of all coalition negotiations: who gets which post? So it won’t be easy.
But even so, the harmony between the three parties is slowly becoming eerie. Because it does not look as if these stumbling blocks could lead to a fall in the traffic light. Wednesday reinforced this impression again – with Bayern-Munich-like sovereignty, the SPD, Greens and FDP have mastered the next appointments and left no doubts about their will to reach an agreement. This was evident from the already known beginning of the coalition negotiations. Then at the joint appearance of three party representatives in the morning on the pandemic emergency. And finally in the speeches by Olaf Scholz, Annalena Baerbock and Christian Lindner at the Federal Congress of the Mining, Chemical and Energy Union (IG BCE) in Hanover.
It was always the first major speeches since the explorations began. So it was exciting to see how the three would perform. Scholz presented himself as the future Federal Chancellor. It struck him that he left all subjunctive aside. No wording like “if this government comes about”, but always just: The new government will do this, in the coming year we will do it … Doubts? Not a trace. The previous finance minister was confident, relaxed and in a good mood. This may also have been due to the fact that trade union visits have home game potential for SPD politicians. But his confidence coincided with the appearance of Baerbock and Lindner.
New freshness instead of exhaustion
The Green leader and the FDP chairman were almost passionately motivated to actually light up the traffic lights. Baerbock spoke at length about how important it is to allow other opinions, also to admit when someone else is right. That you shouldn’t always be in your own bladder. And she showed herself to be knowledgeable about economic policy – one of the central affairs of the FDP’s heart. You thought you could hear the coalition butterflies fluttering in your stomach. In any case, the exhaustion visible at the end of the election campaign has given way to a new freshness.
This also applies to Lindner, who, unlike Scholz and Baerbock, only spoke via video switch. He was also impressed by the chances of a traffic light alliance. It was an alliance of convenience, he said. But more could come of it. What he said must have been music to Scholz and Baerbock’s ears. So he verbally committed himself to a socio-ecological market economy. That was exactly what Baerbock had previously propagated. Lindner said that for his party the market economy was in the foreground. But like Baerbock, he pointed out that the great upheaval in the German economy towards climate neutrality offered great opportunities for local companies.
Sure, not everything was pure harmony. Lindner continues to insist on technology openness – which, from the perspective of the Greens, is a cipher for the long bench on which climate policy has been pushed over and over again in recent years. Anyway, Lindner spoke out in favor of synthetic fuels and e-fuels, which the Greens only want to see in ships and airplanes, but not in cars. He also insisted on tax cuts and spent a lot of time discussing ways in which the state could help “activate” private capital. In terms of funding, he said that subsidies for plug-in hybrids, for example, could be ended. But it didn’t seem like there were insurmountable obstacles lurking here.
Lindner: “Ready to dare something new”
Especially since you have seen in the past few years how different things can be. The new cordiality was not exactly obvious. The FDP could pick out program items from the Greens and SPD at any time and pick them up. One could question the nuclear phase-out or attack the minimum wage. But Lindner doesn’t. At IG BCE, he defends the minimum wage and the planned citizens’ allowance. He even raves about the welfare state as a civilizational achievement that prevents the “fall into the mountain free” after a stroke of fate.
It is almost a wink with the fence post when Lindner investigates the history of his party. It is now 50 years since the FDP opened up for an alliance with the SPD with its Freiburg theses, he says. At that time an active role of the state was demanded, one advocated social emancipation processes. With which he pushed the neoliberalism, which is also anchored in the FDP, very far back into the storeroom. “The Freiburg theses mark a turning point for my party and so was the social-liberal coalition.” It is an “interesting historical parallel” that a new coalition is being discussed again. They did not look for each other and there are big differences in content. The big issues like decarbonisation, digitization and demography need a new start. “As it was then, in 1969, my party is ready to step openly and dare to do something new.”
Olaf Scholz has reasons to grin smurfily, as a previous opponent once called it. Especially since his SPD is well connected in both directions in terms of content. There are a lot in common with the Greens anyway. But also with the FDP you have a basis through him, the conservative, economically and financially competent Soci. So much so that Lindner even goes along with the minimum wage and citizen benefits. Because the three parties seem to have what is important for an alliance: They understand the other side, they have a basis for discussion, they show team spirit. It actually looks refreshingly different from what came from the government bank in the past four years. Whereby one should not forget that in 2017 something similar was said about a Jamaica alliance that seemed possible at the time. That still failed. That is not excluded for the traffic light either. But the spirit of optimism is palpable.