Traffic light coalition: A terribly nice family

The traffic light coalition currently stands for one thing: a lot of controversy. The three government partners get many laws through pretty quietly.

In the middle of this week, SPD leader Lars Klingbeil joked at the SPD faction party in the warm evening light: “I have an idea for the summer, dear Britta and dear Christian: we’ll leave it to the Union to fight for their chancellor candidate – and we’re just going to be a little quieter and enjoy.”

The two invited traffic light parliamentary group leaders from the Greens and FDP, Britta Hasselmann and Christian Dürr, were addressed – an allusion to the noisy first half of 2023, in which the impression sometimes arose that the coalition talked a lot about each other but little with each other.

Homemade Crisis

That it would be a quiet summer, at least for the heating law, this hope lasted for about two hours: until the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, which was widespread late in the evening, to grant the urgent application of a CDU MP – and therefore to postpone the final reading of the draft law.

Reason: The opposition MP’s concern that he does not have enough time to deal intensively with the bill, which has been amended several times, may be correct. The actual decision is still pending, but the traffic light coalition had to react the next day and postponed the final reading of the law until after the summer break.

The self-proclaimed progressive coalition is undoubtedly in a largely home-made crisis, in which the heating law plays a central, symbolic role. And that despite the fact that many projects and legislative proposals were also passed without a dispute in this half-year, be it the law on the immigration of skilled workers, antitrust law, the popular 49-euro ticket – or the new truck toll, which is good for reducing climate-damaging emissions in the saving freight traffic.

It is the paradox of what is presumably the most difficult half of the year for this still new three-party coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP: the balance sheet is not bad, but nobody really notices that because the loud controversial issues overshadow everything.

Rather community of convenience as a family

Since Scholz likes in ARD summer interview just a moment ago we spoke of the “family made up of three parties”, but internally it has long been “purely an alliance of convenience”. With all the associated complications. Some concede that all parties involved made mistakes here. But people are also happy to point to each other internally, who are to blame for the current profile of the coalition, which ranges somewhere between quarrels and half-baked last-minute politics.

It is therefore a far cry from their claim to “strengthen parliament as a place of debate and legislation” after the hectic pandemic-political years.

How much “will to agree” is there?

One of the traffic light lows of this half-year is the genesis of the heating law. A first departmental draft of the Building Energy Act (GEG), which had not yet been coordinated, became public in the spring. The GEG draft was “leaked deliberately,” speculated Minister Robert Habeck in the daily topics. And “for the sake of the cheap tactical advantage”. That made the agreement more difficult and destroyed trust in the government. He was therefore “a bit alarmed as to whether there was any willingness to reach an agreement at all”. His criticism was directed at his own coalition partners.

In the week-long dispute over the proposed law, one message was given far too little attention: that good things are planned – for people’s wallets and for the climate. The coalition failed to simply present a necessary and legitimate debate about the right path to the goal of climate neutrality as such.

After all, the coalition, with its three very different parties, reflects a wide range of political attitudes in society – and could use objective discourse to show how compromises can be achieved. That was her historic chance at the beginning of the traffic light experiment. So far it has not been able to use it – the number of people who are clearly dissatisfied with the government is steadily increasing in Germany.

While the SPD-led ministries act comparatively quietly, the FDP also has its share in the traffic light’s devastating external impact by happily taking on the coalition’s internal opposition role: “We in the FDP are very much in agreement that Robert Habeck’s heating ban law is not may come,” tweeted FDP MP Frank Schäffler at the end of May – a choice of words openly tolerated by the FDP parliamentary group leadership. Loyalty looks different. After the constitutional court put the brakes on the GEG amendment, the FDP was unashamedly pleased that the law was being postponed, even though they had helped to decide on a different, faster timetable in the coalition committee.

You write letters to each other – publicly

In this half-year, the traffic light showed remarkable communication: the exchange of letters between Vice Chancellor Habeck and the FDP Finance Minister Christian Lindner about budget disputes, which is certainly not by chance, or the letter from the Chancellor on basic child security, to unite the two smaller ones in the dispute about the socio-political reform project . One thing is clear: the SPD’s distribution of roles as an adult in the group, while the Greens and FDP tend to fight in the sandpit – it clearly doesn’t work. Not a few hope for a new start, not a few are annoyed by this tough, fragile cooperation: “It can’t go on like this!” one often hears.

But how then? In any case, one must become quieter and “less foam at the mouth, everyone knows that,” said Habeck at the end of this remarkable political week on the fringes of the Bundesrat, before the summer break in parliament begins. “For the coalition to become better in the future means looking back at its actual program,” said political scientist Thorsten Faas in an interview tagesschau.de: “Don’t talk so much about distribution, taxes and finances – but promote social modernization”.

The traffic light coalition had already achieved a lot, which, however, was completely lost: “They can always find each other and pull themselves together.”