Preliminary assessments after the election: From Friday onwards it’s all about content

After the meeting of the Greens and FDP, the first participant spoke up: FDP parliamentary group leader Wissing did not reveal anything about the content, but his preference for black-green-yellow and the rest of the schedule.

The Greens and the FDP want to meet again for talks on Friday. “First substantive questions are to be deepened” in a larger group, said FDP General Secretary Wissing. The members of the Presidium should take part in the meeting from the FDP side. Wissing did not want to comment specifically on possible topics.

The FDP will probably speak to the Union on Saturday and the SPD on Sunday. According to Wissing, a Jamaica coalition continues to be the preferred government option for the FDP. This is due to the content, which has not changed, he explained.

The content of the conversations is confidential

Wissing had an initial meeting with FDP leader Christian Lindner and the two Green leaders Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck. Then they sent out signals of harmony via Instagram selfie. Confidentiality had been agreed on the content of the talks, which is why he could not say anything about the first meeting with the Greens on Tuesday evening.

In the morning, members of both parties took the floor: The Green MP Cem Özdemir emphasized in the ARD morning magazine the programmatic overlap between the Greens and the FDP and their success with young voters. When it comes to digitization, climate protection, the modernization of the country and human rights in foreign policy, they have a common mandate. “We are forced to make something out of it, whether we like it or not,” said Özdemir. Of course there are dividing lines, the Green politician admitted, but: “I am convinced – there will be solutions.”

Özdemir for traffic light coalition

With regard to a coalition led by the CDU, Özdemir expressed doubts. If an offer to talk comes from the Union, you accept it. However, the Union must answer the question of whether it feels able to hold out a government for four years. “There are big question marks,” said Özdemir. “The election winner, that’s the SPD, that’s Bündnis90 / Die Grünen – the FDP has not lost either.” In this respect, there is an expectation in society “that we will pull ourselves together”.

But Özdemir also made a point against the SPD: “I think it’s good that the FDP and the Greens are not playing the game now, that Olaf Scholz is playing us off against each other, but first see where we have in common and then maybe together with the SPD and go to Olaf Scholz and say: We do not want to continue as we did with the grand coalition. “

Green reservations about the Union

The deputy chairwoman of the Greens, Ricarda Lang, positioned herself more clearly for an SPD-led coalition. She currently considers the CDU to be incapable of negotiating in the explorations. “They have to sort themselves first,” she said on Deutschlandfunk. From their point of view, one must first speak to the SPD. With the Social Democrats, the Greens have most of the intersections.

This is how the Green Youth sees it, but goes even further with their rejection: “Under no circumstances can the party that has been explicitly voted out of office be heaved back into the Chancellery,” said federal spokesman Georg Kurz in the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”. He emphasized: “The Green Youth would not participate in a Jamaica coalition with the Union.” Kurz accused the Union of having fueled the current crises. “An alliance with a party that was rightly punished with the worst result in its history is definitely not an option for the Greens.”

FDP sees further opportunities for black-green-yellow

After the first preliminary examination, parliamentary group members from the FDP who lean towards a Union-led government and are critical of the willingness of parts of the FDP to form a traffic light coalition spoke up. FDP foreign politician Alexander Graf Lambsdorff also considered a black-green-yellow coalition to be possible. “The FDP and the Greens are now talking to each other in order to build bridges between the two parties,” said Lambsdorff of the “Augsburger Allgemeine”. “Whether in the end a Jamaica coalition will emerge, as in Schleswig-Holstein, or, for example, a traffic light, as in Rhineland-Palatinate, is open.” In terms of program, the FDP is closer to the Union, stressed Lambsdorff, similar to Wissing. “But we are open to talks with all other parties,” he added.

For Michael Theurer, Vice-President of the FDP parliamentary group, a Jamaica coalition was “not yet off the table”. Party leader Lindner recently made it clear that the Liberals have a preference for such an alliance, Theurer said in the Deutschlandfunk. Theurer apparently also considers a failure of the explorations for a three-party alliance – as after the 2017 federal election – to be possible. Then there could be a continuation of the grand coalition of the Union and the SPD “under the opposite direction,” said Theurer.

According to a representative study by infratest dimap for the ARD Germany trend A majority of 55 percent of citizens prefer an SPD-led coalition with the Greens and the FDP. In the survey, only 33 percent were in favor of a coalition of CDU / CSU, Greens and FDP. However, the majority of the supporters of the FDP favor a Jamaica alliance with the Union (51 percent) instead of a traffic light coalition (41 percent).