The SPD, FDP and the Greens are cautiously optimistic in their exploratory talks. However, FDP General Secretary Wissing points out “that something is only agreed when everything has been agreed”. It should be decided on Friday whether the three parties will enter into formal coalition negotiations.
After the second day of exploratory negotiations, the SPD, Greens and FDP drew a cautiously positive interim conclusion. The general secretaries of the three parties want to write down a “basis for decision-making” by next Friday. On this basis, they want to “decide whether we can recommend our bodies to start coalition negotiations,” said FDP General Secretary Volker Wissing. In the next two days, therefore, “tough decisions will also be made,” said SPD General Secretary Lars Klingbeil.
The talks in the large group were also interrupted until Friday because SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz, in his capacity as Federal Finance Minister, will be at the G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Washington in the coming days; on Friday he comes back to Berlin. It could then be decided that formal coalition negotiations will begin next week. The three general secretaries expressly did not want to commit themselves to this.
Klingbeil said there was “a good start” to the soundings on Monday and Tuesday. There will still be “one or the other hurdle”, but he is sure that they can be overcome. “The tasks are not too small, but I think this can be a good thing.”
Greens would still have to convene party congresses
Greens Federal Managing Director Michael Kellner said that in the past day and a half, the amount of similarities has increased and the amount of differences has become smaller. “But there are still things to be solved.” It is not easy to build bridges between three parties, but the will to do so was “very, very noticeable”.
Kellner described the task of the next two days for him and his two colleagues as follows: “Now write down fourteen hours of debate for the last day and a half alone. I believe that this is a task is understandable, and that is the next step. that we’re going. ”
Should coalition negotiations take place, the Greens would have to agree to this at a small party congress, a so-called state council. Kellner said that they had not yet been invited, but that the Greens were “able to act quickly”. Waiter did not answer the question of whether the invitation would be decided on Friday.
“If there are results, you will see them”
Wissing was more cautious than his colleagues. Even looking ahead to Friday, he said there was no obligation to “make any decision” then. He emphasized that they had spoken to each other politely and objectively, but that it was another question to put the results of such conversations in writing. That is “the moment of truth”, so the FDP general secretary. “This is now in front of us.”
The three did not want to reveal any details about the state of the debate, and there were not even rough hints about it. “This is a very serious and difficult exploratory process, but that does not mean that we are not having very good conversations with one another,” said Wissing. The conversations were “in a very good tone and also very serious and objective,” said Wissing. One can only speak openly with one another “in a confidential room”. “We don’t want to inspire ourselves with lip service, we want to convince ourselves with facts.”
Klingbeil said that trust is an important building block for the success of the talks. The three parties had therefore agreed “that we will not go into the issues”, that is, not publicly announce any intermediate results. “If there are results, you will see them,” Klingbeil told the journalists. But now the time has not yet come.
“There is a result or there is no result”
When asked whether a traffic light coalition has become more likely today, Klingbeil said he thought “we are on the right track”. Wissing added that in such discussions it always applies “that something is only agreed when everything has been agreed”. There are no exploratory interim results, “but in the end an exploratory result or no exploratory result”. Waiter agreed: “All said.”
In addition to the open discussion atmosphere praised by the general secretaries, confidentiality has two further advantages for the negotiators. On the one hand, the demonstrative discretion is a permanent vote of confidence between the negotiators: By keeping their appointment, the parties show each other that they mean business. And it is a signal to the outside world: If the explorations fail, the audience should know that it was not because of the unprofessional nature of the participants, but because of the contradictions in terms of content.
The “in-depth explorations” began on Monday with ten-hour negotiations, and on Tuesday the teams sat together for four hours. That morning the negotiators had indicated a slight skepticism. “Difficult,” said FDP leader Christian Lindner when asked what the mood was. He smiled at it, but evidently he didn’t want to exude excessive optimism. Similar signals came from Annalena Baerbock, head of the Greens, and the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, who said, “We’ll leave it open whether negotiations are now something joyful.”