Probably no one will ever say it publicly. Let alone report beaming with joy. But when the decision of the SPD parliamentary group penetrated on Wednesday to elect a woman to the head of the Bundestag in the Duisburg-based Bärbel Bas, a small sigh of a blow could have been heard in quite a few offices in Berlin’s Bellevue Palace. Maybe even in person in the lord’s office.
Until then, Frank-Walter Steinmeier had to fear that in the debate about the next head of state the pressure would continue to grow to definitely take a wife. If the parliamentary group had stuck to the idea of making their previous boss Rolf Mützenich President of the Bundestag, the question would have been inevitable: Chancellor, Federal and Bundestag President – three men at the top?
So now relaxation. For now, anyway. And as can be heard, Mützenich himself had expressed this in the deliberations: just not this debate too. Seen in this way, Frank-Walter Steinmeier can actually hope again to unite a majority at the next Federal Assembly on February 13th next year. A nice move for an old comrade-in-arms – you might think. Especially since Steinmeier himself had declared early on that he would run again.
The Greens think that nothing has yet been decided on the matter of the head of state
But nothing is decided, even if it is difficult to imagine that Olaf Scholz could openly turn against his old colleague Steinmeier. And the FDP also spoke out very clearly early on in favor of the re-election of the Federal President. But there are also the Greens, who have a significant share of the vote in the Federal Assembly. And their calculation could be completely different. At least that’s how the co-chair Annalena Baerbock can be understood, who promptly declared that nothing had been decided on the head of state for a long time.
The background to this is twofold: On the one hand, the Greens have long dreamed of finally electing a representative to the top of the state. On the other hand, the Greens also have significantly more applicants than top positions that will have to be filled in the case of a traffic light coalition. No wonder, then, that the Greens do not want this option to be automatically taken away from them.
As a possible candidate for the office of Federal President, Katrin Göring-Eckardt has long been named, once parliamentary group leader and top candidate. For them, the situation is particularly complicated because it will either be something again now – or it will no longer work at all. And because the Greens will not get more than two or three really large ministries, it can quickly become tight for Göring-Eckardt.
So there was an initial decision with Bärbel Bas. Most of it is not really fixed yet.