100 days of coalition: what distinguishes black and red from the traffic lights-or what not

They started to do it differently to do it better. Better than the failed predecessor coalition, the traffic lights that Germany left deeply after three years of dispute. Departure, mood change, that is the slogan of black and red. But after only 100 days, the coalition of Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) has to ask the question: are we already arguing like the traffic light?

100 days, this period has introduced former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a yardstick for good governance. To date, politicians have to be measured. For the federal government, the certificate is difficult if it goes according to the surveys. According to the “Germany trend”, only 29 percent are satisfied with the ARD with black and red, it is the worst value since the government took office. Merz himself also lost trust.

For some, the 100 days in Berlin feel like three years. More precisely: three traffic lights. You are tired. You went into the summer break with resentment. Union and SPD urgently needed a break from each other. Vice -Chancellor Lars Klingbeil still does not want to compare the traffic light. Of these times, one is “very far away,” he says to the “Rheinische Post”. But you notice the SPD leader: Government is not so much fun right now.

It didn’t start that badly – apart from the chancellor’s election that was only successful in the second attempt. Merz loves the great foreign policy appearance: the meeting with US President Donald Trump in the White House? Succeeded. The NATO summit? Also. Europe? Fits – although the relationship with Poland and France is already cooling noticeably.

In addition, there is a whole range of laws: “growth booster”, household, pension package, “Bauturbo”, migration policy. Even before the Chancellor’s election, the debt brake was softened. A high pace, Chancellor Minister Thorsten Frei (CDU) sums up in the “Zeit”: “The overall political record of the first three months is absolutely positive.”

However, two topics like mildew are over black and red-and they raise the question of whether Merz underestimates domestic politics and let too much let go.

The first traffic light moment: the electricity tax. It was coordinated in the cabinet that this is not reduced for all citizens. When Klingbeil went public, the Union was violent. The Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (NRW, CDU) and Markus Söder (Bavaria, CSU) also put pressure on CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann.

The SPD may have felt reminded of the FDP, which repeatedly questioned cabinet resolutions in the traffic light coalition.

Ampel moment two: The failed election of new judges for the Federal Constitutional Court. The problem that the Union did not want to support the SPD candidate Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf remained unsolved before the summer break. The coalition is not able to compromise. Schwarz-Rot had “damaged himself”, even Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier certified in the summer interview of the ZDF program “Berlin Direkt”.

Finally, Brosius-Gersdorf withdrew to prevent further escalation and damage to democracy. The basic problem remains: The SPD swallowed toads for the benefit of the coalition, for example in the family reunification for refugees. The Union was not ready for this at Brosius-Gersdorf.

SPD boss Bärbel Bas still sees a clear need for conversation with the Union, which makes it clear in the ARD “Report from Berlin”. The behavior of the coalition partner is “for me there is no little matter and that has not yet been clarified” – there were wounds in the SPD. The confidence in Union faction leader Jens Spahn (CDU) was struck that the SPD could not simply pass the agenda.

Whether black and red manages to solve the judge dispute for Karlsruhe in the Bundestag in September before the next round of elections is considered open. A new ballot would also fail.

Atmospheric disorders

Both incidents show that a coalition discipline that was valid earlier has got out of joint. Black-red, that’s a polyphonic orchestra. It is problematic if the prominent heads dance out of the row that should actually hold and carry the shop together.

Minister of Economics is Katherina Reiche (CDU) with her demand that people should work longer. Merz was not enthusiastic. Or CSU boss Söder with the advance of deleting the citizens’ money for Ukrainian refugees. Many ideas go far beyond the coalition agreement – and provoke the partner. When it comes to the smallest questions, you fight yourself on the edge of the collapse. In the Bundestag, the SPD, the Greens and the left have long been applied together.

The Chancellor has already admitted that not everything went smoothly. “We have to readjust something, and we do that too,” he promised. Klingbeil and he, the top of the coalition, seem to have a resilient relationship. The two tall men can talk to each other at eye level, since the coalition negotiations they have been by you. In the SPD, it is said, a Chancellor Merz has imagined much worse.

Beyond the chief level, however, a common spirit seems to be missing. The tone in which MPs of both political groups talk about each other is by no means always polite. In the SPD, for example, there has been great distrust of the Union faction leader Spahn since the judge dispute, who did not manage to gather his faction behind a decided decision. “If we make agreements, then they have to apply. We have to be able to rely on that as a SPD,” warned Klingbeil recently.

Merz should also have proposed Spahn for the top of the parliamentary group because he believed that he has been united to unite the Union MPs behind the government line. But the Münsterländer was not strong enough in the judge dispute. He could not guarantee the support for the SPD candidate agreed with the coalition partner. Spahn and Merz had to determine painfully: The Union faction is no longer a “Chancellor’s Election Association” as in the days of Helmut Kohl or Angela Merkel.

Union faction no longer

The most recent example: Merz’s decision for a partial stop of the weapon exports to Israel. Uninhibited with the Union faction and the CSU, the Chancellor announced his decision on Friday by short press release. This time Merz got backed from the SPD – there has long been critical of Israel’s bloody approach in the Gaza Strip.

But there was criticism from the Union, the CSU felt over. The Chancellor was forced to publicly explain his policy two days later on TV.

Behind the hand in the CDU it says that after Brosius-Gersdorf this is the next case in which Merz and the Chancellery lacked every radar system for the mood in the Union faction. For black and red, this should mean one thing above all: restless times in the future.

Problems of completely different calibers

Because in the next few months, the Union and SPD will be facing much more important problems than the election of constitutional judges. You urgently need money. In financial planning there is a gap of around 172 billion euros for 2027 to 2029. 34 billion must be saved in the 2027 budget alone. The traffic light coalition has just broken on a tenth.

The Union in particular is based on the fact that the economy jumps and rinses tax money into the health insurers. But that’s a risky bet – and so far there are hardly any signs that it could open. The alternative: save. However, this will hardly work without reforms of the social systems that are likely to be painful for the SPD.

As if that weren’t pressure enough, five state elections in 2026 throw their shadows ahead-including those in Saxony-Anhalt with an enormously strong AfD. It is not for nothing that CSU boss Söder has already described the black-red coalition as the “last cartridge of democracy”.