FDP on the way to the traffic lights: More and more on the defensive

Success with young voters, an exploratory paper full of its own demands – it went well for the FDP. Then Corona came back – and party leader Lindner made a mistake. The liberals are getting more and more on the defensive.

What a brilliant start the Liberals didn’t get off to: in the Bundestag elections, together with the Greens, they scored points with the first-time voters. Again together with the Greens, they pushed ahead with the formation of a government – keyword: selfie. And when those who actually wanted to form a coalition with the Union and had to be dragged into the “other camp” by Red-Green, as the smallest partner (with 11.5 percent in the election), they could demand more than the larger traffic light parties SPD (25.7 percent) and Greens (14.8 percent). The “coalition at eye level” that everyone is striving for is helping the FDP in particular.

Much FDP in the exploratory paper

Indeed, the exploratory paper of the Ampel partners from mid-October documents some of the liberals’ successes. Many FDP demands are included: There should be no tax increases, no touching the debt brake, no goodbye to private health insurance, no speed limit. It is noticeable that in the first talks the liberals were apparently able to prevent more than just setting creative accents.

This has also been shown in the financial debate of the past few weeks: On the one hand, the SPD, Greens and FDP agree that they want to invest a lot of money in climate protection, infrastructure and digitization. It remains unclear where the billions are supposed to come from – economists therefore described the exploratory paper as “dubious”.

Lindner’s change to a statesman

Nevertheless, FDP leader Christian Lindner, who was able to come to a head in the election campaign like few others, was at last consciously statesmanlike. As is well known, he wants to take over the finance department from Olaf Scholz. And he knows that every word a possible finance minister will put on the gold scales on the international stock exchanges. In an interview with the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, for example, he does not give a direct answer to the question of whether the EU may continue to incur joint debts after the Corona reconstruction aid fund – and instead refers to the Finnish Prime Minister, who has ruled this out. He himself advised against speculative debates. Before the elections, the FDP had warned quite clearly against a further development of the EU towards a debt union.

Corona is primarily a burden on the FDP

However, it was not the reluctance of the past weeks in terms of content, which can be excellently justified by referring to the agreed confidentiality of the traffic light partners, that the liberals have now put pressure under pressure, but Corona. No sooner had the SPD, Greens and FDP presented their plans to end the epidemic situation on a national scale than the incidence values ​​shot up. All three partners were caught on the wrong foot, but the liberals in particular had campaigned for a reorganization of the corona measures – many of them even in the hope of a “Freedom Day”.

Lindner’s mistake in the topics of the day

The FDP has not succeeded in making its real concern clear: The debate about corona measures should be conducted in parliaments and not just at government level. In addition, there was a mistake by Lindner: In the daily topics When asked, he insisted that curfews and contact restrictions “have not been effective after scientific research”. Lindner had to backtrack, spoke on Twitter of a misunderstanding – he only wanted to express doubts about the proportionality of curfews for vaccinated people.

The impression that was conveyed was fatal: the traffic light loosens the corona policy under pressure from the FDP – while the corona situation worsens dramatically. Every day since then the party has been on the defensive. In the first parliamentary debate of the newly elected Bundestag you could experience how relish the representatives of the CDU and CSU tried to drive a wedge between the traffic light partners because of the Corona policy.

Will the FDP be crushed between the Union and Red-Green?

It is also striking how hard the Union is now attacking the FDP, with which it would have liked to form a coalition. Every compromise that the FDP makes, for example in financial policy, is likely to be held up against it by the CDU and CSU. On the other hand, there are two traffic light partners, the SPD and the Greens, who had campaigned for red-green in the hope that it would be enough without the FDP.

The similarities in some socio-political issues, for example in migration policy, cannot hide the fundamental differences in the understanding of politics: the SPD and the Greens rely more on state intervention, while the FDP is more on the creativity of the market. The liberals must therefore be prepared for attacks from both sides – and hope not to be crushed in the government.