Wissing versus Lindner – how the FDP argues about the coalition

Volker Wissing has been enjoying surprising popularity for a few days: the FDP man has a fan block in the SPD. Over the weekend, rows and rows of prominent Social Democrats announced on social and other media how clever they found an article that the Transport Minister had written in the Frankfurter Allgemeine last Friday. SPD praises FDP – wrong world?

Wissings was a plea to all traffic light parties to – to put it bluntly – pull themselves together. “Coalitions are not easy. Governing is not easy. Democracy is not easy,” Wissing wrote. “We have a responsibility to ensure that we succeed together.”

The article would probably not have received any greater attention if the paper by FDP leader Christian Lindner had not become known a few hours later, in which the finance minister took stock of large parts of the economic policy of Olaf Scholz and Robert Habeck and one

Suddenly Wissing publicly stood against Lindner. The transport minister praised the traffic lights, the finance minister struggled with the whole direction. The coalition “succeeded very well” in many things, enthused Wissing. In his paper, Lindner called for a “partial fundamental revision of key political decisions” in order to prevent damage to Germany as a business location.

This couldn’t be a coincidence. In recent months there have been occasional reports of conflicts between the two FDP ministers. In addition, Wissing had now placed his article in the FAZ of all places – a popular place for sensational distancing within a party: Angela Merkel broke with Helmut Kohl in the same place in 1999. And also in the FAZ, North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst wrote a critical article about the direction of the CDU in the spring of 2023, with which he infuriated his party friend Friedrich Merz to such an extent that the CDU leader publicly denounced his rival.

So now Wissing versus Lindner? In any case, the Socialists left no doubt who their sympathy was with. Wolfgang Schmidt, head of the Chancellery and Olaf Scholz’s political close, promoted the article as a “worth reading article”. Karl Lauterbach took over: He sees it the same way as his colleagues Wissing and Schmidt. The traffic light was chosen to work as a team to push through overdue reforms, the health minister wrote on the news service “I agree more with my FDP colleague Volker Wissing: Governing is not easy, but we have a responsibility to ensure that it succeeds.”

Not only because of Christian Lindner’s business paper and its similarity to the divorce letter, a hint of 1982 has been hanging over Berlin and the traffic lights for a few days. There are also parallels within the FDP. The line of Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Otto Graf Lambsdorff to end the coalition with the SPD was highly controversial within the Liberals at the time. Not only several prominent MPs such as Hildegard Hamm-Brücher and Günter Verheugen were against it. Interior Minister Gerhart Baum also tried to prevent the breach until the very end. Could Volker Wissing play his role 42 years later?

Wissing and Lindner have a pragmatic, but probably not friendly, relationship. The party leader appointed the Rhineland-Palatinate Economics Minister as General Secretary of the Federal FDP in 2020. At that time, Wissing had been governing Mainz in a coalition with the Social Democrat Malu Dreyer and the Greens for four years. Shortly after Olaf Scholz was nominated as the SPD’s candidate for chancellor, Lindner’s personnel decision was seen as a sign of an opening towards the traffic light coalition.

Wissing already brought good contacts with him. In 2017, he finished negotiating the agriculture chapter with Robert Habeck for a Jamaica coalition under Angela Merkel, which ultimately failed. To Lindner.

When traffic light negotiations took place in 2021, Wissing acted as an important liberal bridge-builder. The Secretary General was also the photographer of the legendary selfie in which he can be seen with Lindner, Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, with which the leaders of the FDP and Greens illustrated their shared government claim.

In the traffic light, Wissing became Minister for Transport and Digital Affairs – important areas for a business party like the FDP. The minister tackled a railway reform and pushed through the Germany ticket, the latter against Lindner’s resistance, who then expressly praised him for it. From the point of view of some party friends, Wissing is not selling his successes enough.

Wissing also came under massive public criticism with a surprising change of position in matters of electromobility and e-fuels, but especially with the environmental balance in the transport sector. However, he could rely on Lindner, who pushed through a new climate protection law in the coalition, which primarily relieved the burden on Wissing’s department.

Recently there have been reports again about differences in money. An agreement on the future of the Germany Ticket was only achieved after a hard struggle. Lindner rejected Wissing’s idea for an investment fund. In July, the Spiegel wrote: “The transport minister’s reputation with his FDP leader Christian Lindner is at its lowest point.” Wissing, on the other hand, emerged from the budget negotiations less upset than he feared after the first drafts.

So is Wissing now distancing himself from his chairman? Or do they both play with distributed roles? An FDP man who can judge this says the conflict is real. At the economic summits that the Finance Minister organizes as a rival event to the Chancellor’s top meetings with industry, Wissing does not play a prominent role, at least publicly.

The FDP Presidium supported Christian Lindner’s paper on Monday. “The author of the guest article took part in the meeting,” said FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai afterwards, a little pointedly – ​​and without mentioning Wissing by name. The approval was unanimous, said Djir-Sarai. Wissing is only a member of the committee as a guest.