Red-green minority government: two double ministers and a new one

Just 19 hours after the traffic lights went out, the red-green minority government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) was complete. It will only have one new member: the Chancellor’s current economic advisor, Jörg Kukies. The 56-year-old former investment banker is stepping in for Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), who was fired by Scholz.

The positions of Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (both FDP), who resigned after the traffic light burst, will be taken over by two previous cabinet members.

Volker Wissing: The renegade

The transport minister is being rewarded for deviating from Lindner’s course. He also receives the justice department. In an unprecedented step, he resigned from his party that morning to remain transport minister in Scholz’s cabinet. Unlike many party friends, Wissing recently campaigned for the FDP to remain in the traffic light coalition. He now wants to join the government as a non-party. “I don’t want to be a burden for my party,” he says.

Cem Özdemir: On the way out

The SPD and the Greens had originally agreed to distribute the four FDP ministries equally among themselves, i.e. two for each party. After Wissing announced his whereabouts, there were only three left. So they went to the following distribution: One for the ex-FDP member, one for the SPD and one for the Greens. Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir gets the latter. He is now also Minister of Education. The 58-year-old is actually almost on the verge of retirement. Only two weeks ago he announced that he would like to run in the 2026 election in Baden-Württemberg as the top candidate for the Greens in order to become Prime Minister there.

The Social Democrat Kukies is currently State Secretary in the Chancellery and is considered one of Chancellor Scholz’s most important advisors. He is his man for economics and finance and negotiates the final documents of the G7 and G20 summits for him. He used to be an investment banker at Goldman Sachs for a long time until Scholz brought him into the Ministry of Finance as State Secretary in 2018. In his private life, he is a passionate marathon runner and Mainz O5 football fan.