75 years of the FDP: Always close to the five percent hurdle

Hardly any party in the Federal Republic has experienced more ups and downs than the FDP. Even 75 years after its founding, it appears to be stuck in a coalition that is doing it more harm than good.

One of the most memorable appearances by FDP leader and Finance Minister Christian Lindner probably lasted barely a whole minute. In these few seconds, the fundamental dilemma in which the FDP currently seems to be stuck was revealed.

It was the end of November, less than ten days after the fateful ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court, which had taken away the financial basis for its political actions from under the traffic light. Lindner had to explain the renewed suspension of the debt brake for 2023 – anything else would have moved the traffic light even closer to the abyss on which it already stood and still stands.

But Lindner clearly found it difficult. He didn’t even manage to use the words “debt brake” or “emergency” in his mouth. And then he jumped off the stage again. The observers were left perplexed. What was that now? The actual explanation had to be submitted in writing afterwards. A moment of defeat for the FDP.

Biggest crisis since 2013

“The party has been far too focused on a purely economically liberal orientation for years,” says lawyer and political scientist Albrecht von Lucke Lindner’s dilemma.

Lindner has made compliance with the debt brake a party dogma from which it is difficult to break out. The sentence he made in 2017 after talks to form a Jamaica coalition with the CDU and the Greens: “It is better not to govern than to govern incorrectly” has also become firmly anchored throughout the entire party.

“After 2013, when the Liberals were thrown out of the Bundestag, this is undoubtedly the FDP’s biggest crisis,” says von Lucke about the current state of the Liberals. The FDP has experienced many ups and downs in its 75-year history and also some twists and turns.

Founded in 1948 as a party of liberal market economy, it was initially to the right of the CDU. Especially in the 1960s and 1970s under Walter Scheel, it opened up somewhat to the left.

Liberal approaches “under the radar”

In the early 1970s, with representatives such as the sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, the FDP represented a socially influenced liberalism with thoroughly ecological approaches critical of capitalism, says von Lucke: “They were almost green pioneers.”

But famous liberals such as Burkhard Hirsch, Gerhart Baum and the former Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger also increasingly campaigned for civil liberties in the following years and significantly expanded the Liberals’ political portfolio. Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger even resigned from her ministerial post in 1996 in protest against the “Great Eavesdropping Attack”, an acoustic surveillance of living spaces. Until the new millennium, Hirsch and Baum brought several lawsuits to protect civil rights before the Federal Constitutional Court.

While the Liberals were able to serve this facet during the Corona pandemic as a constant reminder and warning against too many government restrictions, today the positioning is less or barely relevant. Strong left-wing or civil rights liberal voices such as those of Hirsch, Baum and Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger have also been “under the radar” in the FDP, says Lucke’s expert.

The tip of the scales

Politically, the Liberals have always been flexible. They alternately helped the CDU and SPD become chancellor without ever having a realistic chance of winning the office themselves. Only Guido Westerwelle tried it, but he probably didn’t mean it entirely seriously. It was a fun election campaign in 2002 with the slogan “Strategy 18” – for 18 percent. After all, the Liberals achieved more than seven percent with the unusual appearances on “Big Brother” and an extensive tour in “Guido Mobil”.

A success for the Liberals, as the five percent hurdle is a permanent test. In 2010, Lindner, then general secretary of the FDP, described his own electorate as a “shy deer” that needed a lot of trust “until it comes to the clearing.” If you then snap a branch, it will be gone quickly.

In the current traffic light coalition, the cracking in the political clearing seems to be particularly loud: for two years, the FDP has become a serial loser in state elections. Most recently, the party in Bavaria failed to pass the five percent hurdle.

Profiling through polarization

Even at the beginning, the FDP had taken on too much of the role of the opposition in the government in the traffic lights, said von Lucke. “Especially after the failed election in Lower Saxony at the end of 2022, the Liberals in the traffic light radicalized themselves again,” analyzes the political scientist.

Secretary General Bijan Djir-Sarai even described his own green coalition partner as a “security risk”. The dispute over the heating law, migration policy or now the budget regularly leads the traffic light to its own abyss.

The Liberals aren’t pulling the ripcord – at least not yet. However, the shy deer in the electorate is increasingly taking cover. According to current surveys, the FDP is only at four percent in the federal government.