For Friedrich Merz, this agreement is a memo

A funny postcard saying is: “Was this day really necessary?” A sigh cast in writing that seems familiar to many people after a day full of adversity.

From today you could print posters for politics: “Was this week really necessary?” The matter seems to have ended well. After days of tough struggle between the Greens, the SPD and the Union about the special fund planned by black and red and the exception of defense spending from the debt brake, the negotiating partners were able to announce an agreement on Friday afternoon.

This is good for the country and good for Friedrich Merz – not only because his chances for the chancellorship have increased, but because he has learned something again. For the possibility of investing in Germany’s future and security, Merz once again pays a good sum of political tuition.

On Thursday, they had insulted themselves in the Bundestag’s plenary. Green Group leader Katharina Dröge accused Friedrich Merz in a sharp speech not to think of the country, but only. Merz had previously portrayed the Greens as ungrateful journeyman (and society) who did not get their neck full.*

Then it was negotiated until late into the night – and Merz had to pay. The result looks like a widespread victory for the Greens. Instead of 50 billion euros, 100 billion euros of the special fund should now flow into the climate transformation fund, the goal of climate neutrality by 2045 is to be anchored in the Basic Law.

The “additional” required by the Greens, which says that all expenses from the special fund actually have to be additional investments, is also laid down in the joint amendment. The Greens wanted to prevent the Union and SPD from finishing election gifts with the ExtraGeld.

The Union should be satisfied with the fact that the term of the special fund has been extended from ten to twelve years, i.e. less money is available per year. The determination that defense expenditure from one percent should be excluded from the debt brake and not, as originally required by the Greens, from 1.5 percent.

For the SPD, it should be the most important victory that the special fund will come at all and that it will not be forced to permanently agree to socialize in the next four years.

It is not a spectacular compromise, but one that could have been found before and with significantly less public hostility between green and black. So the public was allowed to join in for a week whether “the one up there” might not be able to do it in the end. Was that necessary?

For Friedrich Merz, this should be great apprenticeship if he wants to succeed as a chancellor: he has to learn to consider things from the end. Just as Angela Merkel always used for himself. Specifically: from the moment it was clear that the Union and SPD needed the Greens for their ambitious plans, he could have discreetly searched the exchange at eye level and offered concessions. So it was the CSU national group leader Alexander Dobrindt, who was a green hater, who is said to have hit the right tone in the stuck conversations with the Greens to bring the whole thing to a good end. He has just been in business a little longer than Friedrich Merz.

But the Greens also have to put up with criticism. As understandable as their furor was that they should now agree to a proposal that originally comes from one of theirs, Robert Habeck, but was always blocked by Friedrich Merz and the Union, their strategy was so dangerous to drive their own people to the palm with the demonstrative blank.

Because from there they had to come down so that special funds and debt brake exception will also get the necessary two-thirds majority in the Bundestag next Tuesday. If all members of the Greens, the SPD and Union were correct, the projects went through with 31 votes more than necessary. If one considers that a complete presence due to illness or other personal prevention is never completely given and that additional 200 MPs of these three factions are eliminated and are therefore no longer “controllable” by faction discipline, the vote on the high -risk affair becomes.

It is quite possible that the Union and SPD will end up naked. The damage would not only have Friedrich Merz, who would start as a weak chancellor. But everyone to whom the democracy threatened by the edges is still important.

*In an earlier version of the article, Merz reacted to dröge. In fact, it was the other way around.