Electricity tax: five hours of debate – and afterwards only losers

The coalition peaks negotiated five hours on Wednesday evening. Five hours, at the end of which they came out with the same result with which they had gone in: the electricity tax is reduced, but only for some and not for everyone, as was announced in the coalition agreement. Friedrich Merz, Lars Klingbeil and the rest of the troops turned in a circle. This is not a good sign.

And something else indicates solidifying mood in the black and red alliance: Unlike after the first coalition committee, when the Chancellor and the party leader celebrated extensively, no one wanted to take the press this time. Nothing like gone, the motto was called. Empty hands were embarrassing enough for the coalitioner, so they didn’t want to thrash hollow phrases.

Instead, a result paper was sent, which was so short and meaningless that the word result could also have been deleted: the electricity tax is only reduced when there is money again. End of the announcement. And when could that be? Is not in it.

The finding according to this coalition committee is obvious: the black and red government is in its first crisis. Not yet dramatic, but in such a way that there is no easy escape, not a solution where afterwards – and that is very important for what, well, soul life of a coalition – everyone can somehow declare as winners. On the contrary.

While the evening coolness on Berlin afterwards, some Unionists in particular may have risen the heat in the head. Carsten Linnemann, Jens Spahn and most recently Markus Söder are the biggest losers of this evening. Didn’t they all demand that the electricity tax also had to be reduced for Otto and Ottilie normal consumers? They had not only stood against Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil from the SPD, but also against their own Chancellor, who had approved Klingbeil’s procedure.

All three, the parliamentary group leader, his vice and CDU general secretary, as well as the CSU chairwoman, are now faced with a spicy question: Should you swell the trouble of the Union MEPs in the parliamentary household consultations and thus put the chancellor under pressure-or if you fall into your back, bubbles the uprising and fist in the pocket loyalty to Merz?

If the three Union fights have lost, did Merz and Klingbeil not logically win? Yes and no. It is true that Klingbeil in particular has kept his position, which must also be saved in this household, loosened debt brake, billion -dollar investment programs. As a result, Friedrich Merz kept it to him, whether out of conviction or just, so as not to damage the battered Mister 65 percent at the SPD tip, is not yet known.

But that is exactly Merz ‘problem. Because the Chancellor is in conventional understanding – and definitely also in his own – the one who leads. No plumber of power, as he described Olaf Scholz, but one who specifies the direction. That would mean what he knows what he wants – and you know it too. But when lowering the electricity tax, Merz communicated poorly, so that his party did not know what he wanted. Then he first signaled benevolence for an additional reduction, just to pat in a day later, the government is historically not judged one day whether it has reduced the electricity tax or not. It sounded a bit like his new friend Donald Trump: today, tomorrow. Or worse: it looked like he didn’t really care.

Ok, so Lars Klingbeil is the bright winner? Position enforced, strength proved, forgotten party conference? Unfortunately not really. Because the finance minister and SPD chairman appears more and more like a man who lives in two worlds: one that he promises, another, by name reality. Even with the minimum wage, the tariff partners stayed significantly behind what Klingbeil had promised. Now the same applies to the coalition and electricity tax. The Finance Minister can point out that the coalition agreement under financing reservation. But how long can he persevere politically to promise the potential SPD clientele more money in the wallet and then not to deliver fully?

Klingbeil’s next problem is already making ahead. In the civil allowance, where the finance minister wants to save 4.5 billion euros in two years, his own deputy in the party chairman, the comrade Alexander Schweitzer, has already spoken of a utopia. Could be because Schweitzer as a long-time minister and now head of government in Rhineland-Palatinate Klingbeil and also the faithful Chancellor has something ahead: government experience.