Traffic light explorations: Intensive discussions, contentious issues

Now it’s about the political details: The traffic light explorers from the SPD, Greens and FDP advised for almost ten hours. Obviously, controversial issues, such as tax policy, also came up.

The SPD, the Greens and the FDP held in-depth discussions to work out common ground for a possible traffic light coalition. Representatives of the three parties met in Berlin for new explorations, initially to discuss details in smaller groups. The conversations ended after almost ten hours in the evening.

According to the parties, a number of contentious issues were on the agenda. All major topics such as finances or economics should be discussed once by Tuesday, it was said from the negotiating circles.

Secret explorers

In order to enable efficient, time-saving discussions, the three parties agreed to hold the exploratory rounds in the smallest possible groups of six people each. Depending on the topic, specialist politicians would then also be added to the core of the party leadership. Confidentiality was agreed on the content.

The negotiators are not expected to speak publicly until Tuesday afternoon. On Friday, the traffic light parties want to draw an interim conclusion and possibly decide whether to start coalition negotiations.

Put the programs on top of each other and see what can be brought together well, said Thomas Kutschaty, the SPD state chief in North Rhine-Westphalia tagesschau24. “In many areas I can imagine that we will actually achieve a socio-political awakening.”

“No tax increases”

However, the Liberals also named red lines: “No tax increases and no relaxation of the debt brake of our Basic Law”, these demands are known, said the parliamentary manager of the FDP parliamentary group, Marco Buschmann, the “Spiegel”.

Nevertheless, he was optimistic about the chances of a government coalition with the SPD and the Greens. There are still “other areas of friction”, but all three parties are ambitious.

Green leader Robert Habeck had already emphasized the evening before how important it is to succeed in negotiations with the FDP. “Failure is actually not an option,” he said on the ZDF program “Berlin direkt”. If a coalition of the SPD and the Union were to emerge again, Germany would “go nuts”. “We have to pull ourselves together a bit,” said Habeck.