Government
Dreyer: Quarrels in federal traffic lights distract from performance
Malu Dreyer (SPD), Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate. photo
© Jörg Halisch/dpa
There is always a dispute in the federal traffic light. In Rhineland-Palatinate, on the other hand, the only state traffic light government works quite silently. How does Prime Minister Dreyer feel about this?
The Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate Malu Dreyer finds the squabbling of the federal traffic light in public “very unfortunate”.
“This behavior is particularly annoying because it keeps distracting from the good results that the coalition has already achieved,” said the head of the only traffic light government in a German state in an interview with the German Press Agency in Mainz. “It is a creative coalition at a time that is being shaped by change that we haven’t seen in decades: the war, the energy crisis and the end of the fossil-fuel age.”
“Many different opinions represented”
“Struggling for a position is also part of democracy,” emphasized Dreyer. “You can fight for positions, even within a government, and not everything has to take place behind closed doors.”
The perception of the quarrels also has something “to do with today’s time, in which every difference of opinion is considered a dispute and not a constructive debate or argument”. “The strength of a traffic light is precisely that it represents so many different opinions, which then have to be brought together in a compromise,” said Dreyer. “It also covers the needs of a lot of people.”
“Reaching solutions with consideration for each other”
Regarding the recent conflict about the basic child security from Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) and the Growth Opportunities Act from Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), the social democrat said: “My claim on the federal government is that it resolves this conflict.” In view of the current problems, people have a need for order and orientation.
The dispute from Berlin does not affect the traffic lights in the country, said Dreyer. “At the federal level, some issues, such as tax or social policy, come into play with greater force.” In Rhineland-Palatinate there is already some experience with the second traffic light government and we know each other. “We don’t always have the same position either, but we manage to exchange them more in the background, or to find solutions with consideration for each other.”