“There is no typical camp formation, there are no natural partners as in the past, but a lot of complexity,” said Greens co-boss Annalena Baerbock at the congress of the union IG Bergbau, Chemie und Energie. FDP leader Christian Linder said at the same event that the traffic light will start as a “coalition of convenience”, from which something could emerge.
Results by November 10th
The 22 working groups are due to present the results of their deliberations by November 10th. Almost 300 politicians from the three parties negotiate. Strict confidentiality has been agreed. After November 10th, the core negotiating groups will meet again with the leaders of the SPD, Greens and FDP to clarify the major points of contention, for example in financial or climate policy. The contract should be in place by the end of November and then be confirmed by the parties’ committees. The new German federal government could then be sworn in in the week of December 6th.
The parties have already submitted a twelve-page exploratory paper in which, for example, the waiver of tax increases or the loosening of the debt brake were stipulated. The parliamentary managing director of the FDP parliamentary group, Marco Buschmann, now spoke of a “good sign for democracy” that the three parties had found a position in the Corona policy “objectively, sensibly, trustingly and together”.
Making lockdowns legally impossible
The traffic light parties want to make new corona lockdowns legally impossible, but are still relying on lower-threshold measures such as mask requirements to contain the pandemic until March 20, 2022. Green co-parliamentary group leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt, the SPD health expert Dirk Wiese and the parliamentary manager of the FDP parliamentary group, Marco Buschmann, presented a joint key points paper of the three parties on Wednesday. “School closings, lockdowns and curfews will certainly no longer exist with us,” said Wiese.
Baerbock appealed to the traffic light parties “to get out of old rituals” and not to stay “in their own filter bubble”. It is about “not only filling in old trenches, but also building new bridges”. Lindner also spoke of the “willingness to step into the open and create something new”. As an example of the FDP’s willingness to compromise, he cited the willingness to bring forward the coal phase-out. “That was not a concern of the FDP, but it is part of a coalition that one accepts the compromises”.
On Wednesday, however, there were only dissonances. FDP General Secretary Volker Wissing criticized the fact that Scholz and Greens co-leader Robert Habeck had blamed the FDP on Sunday for the fact that, because the rich did not raise taxes, relief for small and medium incomes was impossible. “If we now start to explain to each other why what and who is responsible for what is not possible, then it will not be easier,” Wissing told Welt-TV.
