It’s hectic times for Florian von Brunn. The social democrat from Munich already has two important jobs as co-regional chairman of his party in Bavaria and parliamentary group leader in the state parliament, but now there is a political task to be added. He will therefore leave the plenary session in the Maximilianeum on Wednesday more or less at a run and travel to Berlin as quickly as possible to find a few more hours of sleep in the hotel. He can then get started on Thursday morning and negotiate the coalition agreement with many colleagues from Munich. “It will be exciting,” he says, and probably also time-consuming.
This has consequences for von Brunn even before he starts his work group on environmental protection and nature conservation. “I canceled the vacation that was actually planned for next week.” On Thursday and Friday it will first be about getting to know colleagues from the Greens and the FDP. “You have to carefully explore what’s possible. But I’m confident that it will be more than has been possible with the Union so far.” The SPD, Greens and FDP have agreed on a total of 22 specialist working groups in order to find a substantive basis for the desired traffic light coalition.
They will meet from Wednesday on, and many Munich residents will have a suitcase in Berlin during this time. The Liberals send Bayern boss Daniel Föst and their environmental expert Lukas Köhler, the Social Democrats next to the co-head of the state of Brunn, the city chairwoman Claudia Tausend, the Greens their vice-chairwoman Jamila Schäfer and Dieter Janecek. And in this case you can also count their previous parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, Anton Hofreiter, to the Munich team, even if he is based in the district. He will head the mobility working group for the Greens and should keep the difficult situation of local public transport in the city and the surrounding area on the radar.
When it comes to affordable housing, the views of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP differ greatly
The two liberals will each lead the working group for their party. Köhler’s topic will be “Climate and Energy”. Föst will take care of “building and living” and meet there with SPD colleague Tausend. “We building and housing politicians know each other across party lines, of course, as do the concepts of potential coalition partners,” says Föst. And afterwards, in a friendly way, that he also appreciates them. He also formulates a goal that everyone can subscribe to: “We have to make living affordable again, especially in big cities.”
The way the Liberals took to get there has so far been very different from that of the SPD and the Greens. Föst sets a social-liberal signal at the start. It came to the subject from family policy, he explains, “because I have seen how difficult it is for families with low and middle incomes to afford affordable housing”. It is now necessary to work at full speed on this. “I’m looking forward to the negotiations.”
This also applies to Dieter Janecek (Greens), he has canceled almost all other appointments for the time of the talks in order to be “clearly focused”. “It will be a very labor-intensive process in the coming weeks, after all we are negotiating a budget of more than 21 billion euros in the areas of innovation, research and science.”
He already knows some of the participants in the conversations well, some less. It will also be a matter of finding a personal basis for the negotiations. “Of course, the human element plays a role in such conversations. It will be very important that we manage to create something that connects, but I’m optimistic about that.”
His party colleague Jamila Schäfer heads the working group Europe for the Greens, together with the Heidelberg MP Franziska Brantner. Last Thursday, they met their counterparts from the SPD and FDP for the first time at the Berlin fair, as did the heads of the other negotiating teams. The mood was good, she says, even if everyone knew: “It won’t be a walk in the park.” There is a lot of work ahead of me, it will certainly be exhausting at times. Nevertheless, they have firmly resolved not to meet until late at night and not even on weekends. It will soon be seen whether this can be sustained. Because the schedule is sporty: after a few days there should be the first interim results.
On the subject of local transport, there is “damned little in the exploratory paper,” says Reiter
The big question on Thursday was first of all: How do you get together – so, physically and in terms of calendar? Where do you meet in the coming weeks and when? It was important to get to know each other, arrange first appointments, sound out how the others work and how they imagine the coming process. Then we ate together and started good negotiations, reports Schäfer. The first meeting of the entire working group is scheduled for next Wednesday. Twelve members belong to Europe, four from each party.
The city is eagerly watching what results the Munich and their colleagues in Berlin come to. From the background, but not idle. Already during the exploration, messages went back and forth between the town hall and the SPD headquarters in Berlin. Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) was and is in contact with Secretary General Lars Klingbeil in particular. For the negotiations, he named the most pressing problems faced by large cities like Munich in a letter: “Renting and living, local public transport, sufficient pay for educators.” On the subject of local transport, the exploratory paper says “damn little is in it”. In addition, a reform of the hospital system is urgently needed. “It cannot be that municipal clinics are the losers financially simply because they ensure emergency care.”
It was already clear to him that the fundamental questions would now be clarified, said Reiter. But he still has to get rid of one thing, also for the time after that: Berlin must involve the municipalities much more and transfer competencies. The fact that the federal government regulates the amount of parking fees in Munich must change quickly. Far too often, from the Munich mayor’s point of view, it goes like this: “A decision is made in Berlin, we carry it out or bathe it out.”