Thuringia: Wagenknecht is not amused by the probes

This Friday, in Erfurt, at 1 p.m., the three parties that want to govern Thuringia in the future will present their exploratory paper. On this basis, they want to hold official coalition negotiations starting next week.

At least that’s the plan.

The 18 pages plus table of contents are, as you would expect, full of well-sounding sentences and a few promises. Everything should become more digital, safer, social and generally better than in the years of the red-red-green coalition. And because Thuringia hardly has any financial reserves left, the rules for taking on debt are being stretched as far as possible.

Contrary to various media reports, the document does not say anything about responsibilities. The excerpt from an alleged negotiating document that was widely circulated in Berlin on Thursday was described by negotiators in Erfurt as “misleading” or even “falsified”. It is unanimously said that they have not even discussed the distribution of the ministries.

No agreement on war and peace

However, what is still missing from the paper is explosive. The three potential partners explicitly do not comment on arms deliveries to Ukraine or on the stationing of US medium-range weapons in Germany – and are therefore certainly not negative.

Instead, on the last page of the document on the controversial topic there is only a single sentence into which everything and nothing can be interpreted. It reads: “We will make room for the issue of peace in Europe in the coming negotiations and address it together by determining our position as part of a possible preamble.”

This means: The two central foreign policy demands of party founder Sahra Wagenknecht will be postponed. Only at the end of the coalition negotiations – when all demands have been agreed and ministries have been distributed – should a compromise on war, peace and missiles be found. Then, according to the calculation behind it, the emerging coalition will hardly be able to be divided apart.

Wagenknecht prefers the opposition

The party leadership sees the approach as an affront. There’s no way it’s going to work that way, people in the capital said indignantly. Agreements on a Corona amnesty and the rejection of gender language were also missing from the paper. On Thursday there were long and frosty crisis talks between the leaders in Berlin and Erfurt until late in the evening. Agreement: none.

Wagenknecht’s strategy was based on two scenarios from the start. Either the CDU and SPD would largely agree to their foreign policy demands, which was illusory from the start given the orientation and decision-making of the two parties in the federal government. Or the BSW would sporadically tolerate a CDU-led minority government and otherwise occasionally form the majority with the AfD without making any concrete agreements. This is what the Thuringian Union did in the last electoral period.

The opposition role with changing majorities is obviously Wagenknecht’s desired model. In this way, the BSW could force concessions from the state government and at the same time distinguish itself against it. Above all, however, the state party would not endanger Wagenknecht’s radical populist course in the looming federal election campaign with realpolitik compromises.

“No cooperation with the AfD”

But the Thuringian BSW state chairwoman Katja Wolf clearly has no interest in this back and forth. “There is no cooperation with the AfD,” says the exploratory paper. Only discussions on “necessary parliamentary procedures” should be held. After all, the largely right-wing extremist party has more than a third of the seats and therefore a blocking minority.

Distance is important to Wolf. The former left-wing mayor of Eisenach explicitly moved to the BSW at the beginning of the year with the announcement that she would keep the Thuringian AfD under Björn Höcke out of power and give the crisis-ridden country a stable government. She wants to go through with this now, even if it is against Wagenknecht’s wishes. Wolf is protected: Unlike the federal chairwoman, she has the formal negotiating mandate in Erfurt and, like the other 14 parliamentary group members, has a parliamentary seat until 2029.

Wagenknecht, in turn, as the founder and namesake, claims interpretive sovereignty for the entire party and derives from this the right of veto in the state associations. In Erfurt she can also point out that the CDU, BSW and SPD together only have 44 of the 88 seats in the state parliament. The stalemate means: The coalition would have to partially come to terms with the Left Party of the still acting Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, with the CDU, BSW and SPD rejecting a “separate agreement” according to the paper.

Wolf versus Wagenknecht: The conflict of interest has explosive potential for the entire party. Because what is currently happening in Thuringia will have a strong influence on the ongoing or just beginning explorations in Brandenburg and Saxony. If a formulaic compromise on war and peace is found that saves face for both sides, it is likely to be copied in the other two countries. If the negotiations in Erfurt fail, things will become significantly more complicated, at least in Saxony, where the CDU, BSW and SPD are also talking to each other.

Ultimately, the power struggle could even get out of control and the state party in Thuringia could collapse. The BSW’s success story would at least be damaged, if not over.

Things remain exciting in Thuringia

This also puts Wagenknecht, who initially did not want to comment when asked, in a trap. If it gets involved in a coalition in Thuringia, it may jeopardize its “peace party” brand and, above all, make itself vulnerable to the AfD. If she vetoes it, she risks regional division or, in Erfurt, nothing can ever be ruled out politically: personal humiliation.

So things remain exciting in Thuringia. After the joint paper is presented at midday, the committees of the state parties are expected to decide to start coalition negotiations on Friday and Saturday. If successful, the state parliament could elect CDU state chairman Mario Voigt as Prime Minister at the end of November and beginning of December with the votes of the Union, BSW and SPD – and at least the abstentions of the Left – in the third round of voting at the latest.

At least that’s the plan, as I said. But no one in Erfurt can currently say whether it will work in the end.