Talks start: This is how the coalition negotiations are going

With a huge number of personnel, the traffic light games are entering the first coalition negotiations today. How does it go from here? Who is there? And which departments are you already wrestling with? An overview.

Even if the biggest hurdle for a possible traffic light coalition has already been cleared with the explorations – now the real coalition negotiations begin. Because the exploratory paper available so far contains few clear specifications and remains vague, especially in terms of implementation. During the explorations, the SPD, Greens and FDP found out that they could follow a common line. But when it comes to factual issues, they are sometimes far apart, be it climate protection, migration or the future of the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline.

Today there is to be a kick-off meeting of a first top round in the afternoon. This includes the respective main negotiating groups and the chairmen of the working groups of all three parties.

The working groups

Each traffic light party sends up to six specialist politicians from federal politics, but also from state and local politics, to the 22 working groups. There, the actual issues must be negotiated and compromises sought. They are divided into seven thematic groups – from “Modern state, digital awakening and innovation” to “Climate protection in a socio-ecological market economy” to “Freedom and security, equality and diversity in a modern democracy”.

At the traffic lights it could get confusing – it can be assumed that around 300 politicians are involved. For comparison: in the negotiations for the grand coalition in 2017, there were 18 such rounds. A lot of interface management will be needed between the negotiating working groups, as some of them overlap. Another difference to 2017 is that the negotiating teams of the respective parties appear in the same strength, not according to the proportional representation of their Bundestag election results. Each working group then consists of twelve to 18 members.

It is therefore entirely conceivable that the groups will be changed again in the course of the negotiations. Their content-related breakdown is not yet reflected in future ministries, but it does reveal focal points: In addition to a foreign policy working group that also deals with security, defense policy and human rights, there is, for example, its own on the topics of flight, migration and integration. Here, for example, the FDP and the Greens will still have to come together, who set different priorities in immigration policy.

In some working groups between the FDP and SPD things are likely to be lively, for example in the one on building and living, which is headed by former Juso boss Kevin Kühnert at the SPD. Kühnert is on the left in his party and certainly has different ideas about rent policy than the FDP.

The Schedule

So far there has only been a specific schedule for the start of the coalition negotiations: namely the start this week and the actual start of the working groups in the middle of next week. How long the coalition negotiations will run is open. Those involved assume at least three to four weeks for the negotiations in the working groups. After that, the results would have to be summarized by the core teams in a final coalition agreement. The core teams include the top candidates and party leaders, but also Prime Minister Malu Dreyer for the SPD, and for the Greens it could also be ex-Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin, who is experienced in negotiations.

If it were up to Scholz, he would like to be Chancellor on St. Nicholas Day. However, this would only succeed without major complications with fairly swift negotiations.

The scramble for posts and departments

The negotiators always publicly assert that the departmental structure and the allocation of positions are at the end of the negotiation process. However, it can be assumed that each party already has a plan of its desired ministries, department cuts and staffing in the drawer. This field has apparently not yet been agreed: In the past few days it was noticeable that FDP politicians proposed their top candidate Christian Lindner as finance minister. Robert Habeck was also publicly brought into play by the Greens for the post – for example by the Baden-Württemberg Green Finance Minister Danyal Bayaz.

It is questionable, however, that Habeck, who holds a doctorate in philology and writer, who has also made mistakes in the past with the BaFin commuter allowance and financial services supervision, would like to become a man of numbers. In any case, he would have a problem of acceptance in this office with the coalition partner FDP – not a good prerequisite for good cooperation.

At this ministry, which the FDP quite blatantly claims for itself in order to oversee its key election campaign issues such as compliance with the debt brake and “no tax increases”, the Greens are more likely to be more about tactics: the longer they claim that Keeping finance departments, the more they can possibly get out of a strong climate protection ministry. The FDP would have to buy the ministry dearly. For the Green politician and think tank founder Ralf Fücks, it is clear “that the Greens and FDP will claim a strong steering ministry as a counterweight to the Chancellery – or several,” he said NDR.

However, it is currently not possible to publicly clarify the question of whether the previous Finance Minister Olaf Scholz will give this key ministry at all – unlike SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder at Red-Green – from the SPD. He may also attract the two partners, the Greens and the FDP, with opulent super-ministries and two vice-chancellor posts. Because the financing of the investments planned by the traffic light explorers is still open. Since there is a commitment as a concession to the FDP not to undertake any tax increases and to adhere to the debt brake, the financing of the traffic light projects becomes one of the decisive obstacles for the success of a coalition agreement. A lot of trickery is necessary here, said former SPD finance minister Hans Eichel on Deutschlandfunk.

The sticking points and intersections in terms of content

In addition to the controversial and central question of financing the planned investments, climate protection will also remain one of the sticking points. For example: Are subsidies being removed – with that the premium for e-cars? And what will happen to the commuter allowance? An early coal phase-out, one of the Greens’ core demands, is currently only a possibility in the exploratory paper (“ideally this will be successful by 2030”).

SPD Chancellor candidate Scholz likes to emphasize that the SPD, Greens and FDP combine “the idea of ​​progress”. “They have different, but certainly overlapping ideas about it.” There are “large overlaps” – such as an enlargement and modernization of the power grid and the expansion of energy generation from wind power and solar. “To do this, we have to tighten the planning and approval procedures and support private investments in the modernization of industry. There is a lot that can be agreed on.”