TV review
“Maybrit Illner”
Harmony with Baerbock and Lindner, attacks from Röttgen and the question: What is on Illner’s shirt?
Maybrit Illner discussed on Thursday evening how the plans for a possible traffic light coalition should be paid for
© ZDF / Jule Roehr
In “Maybrit Illner” Annalena Baerbock and Christian Lindner give the harmonious double again. When CDU man Norbert Röttgen called the exploratory paper a “step backwards”, however, Baerbock’s good mood was over.
From Simone Deckner
The most exciting thing comes at the end: Maybrit Illner wants to know from her guest Christian Lindner whether the future finance minister is sitting here at the table. The FDP boss smiles upset, but then says what he has always said so far when it comes to the specific allocation of posts to the new traffic light coalition and, in particular, to his new post: nothing concrete. “There has not yet been any talk of ministries.”
How practical for Maybrit Illner that she has Annalena Baerbock sitting next to her on the other side. “Would Robert Habeck be the better finance minister?”, She changes her question and immediately gives an answer: “You can just say yes!” Baerbock probably thinks for a second too long for Lindner’s taste, but then gets the curve: “What’s the point if I say that here at the table? We have to discuss that together and we don’t do that via television interviews.” Illner probes again: “You could have just said ‘Yes’ now, but you didn’t!” Baerbock replies with a smile: “From my point of view this is of course logical, but there are three parties at the table.” Christian Lindner looks satisfied. Still quite unusual, this harmony.
Actually, personal details were not the topic of Maybrit Illner’s broadcast, but rather the financing of the ambitious goals that the “coalition of the century” has set itself. “Smallest denominator or big throw – affordable traffic light?” or in other words: who should pay for it all?
Discussed about it:
- Annalena Baerbock, B’90 / Greens – party leader
- Christian Lindner, FDP – party chairman
- Norbert Röttgen, CDU – Member of the Bundestag, member of the CDU Presidium
- Herfried Münkler – Political scientist, author (connected from Munich)
- Christiane Hoffmann – Author in the capital office “Spiegel”
“Are a different generation of politicians”
It was exciting to see how Annalena Baerbock and Christian Lindner would appear at the first public appearance after the harmoniously communicated explorations. The answer: still harmonious. The election campaign is over, there is a lot to do. “We are also a different generation of politicians, where there is not so much babbling anymore,” said Baerbock offensively.
Norbert Röttgen took this personally. He attacked the rest of the program, especially the Greens: He had now “read through the exploratory paper three times”, but did not recognize what the trademark of this government in climate policy was. The Greens would even have “agreed to a step backwards” by, for example, the review of the CO2-Balance increased from annually to several years and at the same time extended to several instead of individual sectors (e.g. transport, housing, industry). The criticism of the Green Youth and of “active climate protectionists” is therefore justified.
Röttgen versus Baerbock
Baerbock brushed off the criticism as “polemical”. “The exploratory paper clearly states that every sector must make its contribution, otherwise we will not become climate-neutral.” In addition, I also want to “check in the medium term” which goals are being achieved, all in accordance with the Paris climate protection agreement. Turning to Röttgen, she said: “If we go below the climate targets, as they say, we can throw all the exploratory paper in the trash can.”
She reckons that the new government will need 50 billion a year for investments over the next ten years: “It is a task of the century to create climate-neutral prosperity.” Christian Lindner did not want to confirm the total at this point in time, just this much: “We aim to acquire private investments”, for example through KfW or Deutsche Bahn. It is important to “prevent undemocratic shadow budgets”.But Norbert Röttgen sees precisely this danger: “If you shift expenditure out of the federal budget, it leads to a lack of transparency and less parliamentary control.”
“Financing still huge construction site”
Political scientist Winfried Münkler underlined how important it was for the new government to take out loans now: “This task of the century needs money over a long period of time, at least two legislative periods.” However, he saw another challenge: “Politicians are all clever tacticians, but you need something completely different: strategists.” It remains to be seen whether the future government team has this gift.
“Spiegel” reporter Christiane Hofmann was just as critical when she identified the financing as “a huge construction site” before the coalition negotiations with the SPD, FDP and the Greens: “The financial part is the shortest part in the exploratory paper,” ideas for social redistribution ” are completely absent “. That is an interesting point, said Illner, which we will come back to later. But neither on this nor on the question “How many costs will the citizens have to bear?” there were answers.
Twitter rotates: “What’s on Illner’s T-shirt?”
After all, there was an answer to another frequently asked question that evening: “What is writtenon Illner’s T-shirt? “, many viewers on Twitter wanted to know.” I already know that I can’t sleep all night if I can’t find out what’s on the T-shirt, “one viewer desperately wanted to know wore a conspicuously yellow, printed top. Because she had buttoned her blazer, only single letters could be made out that made no sense. Thanks to swarm intelligence, the puzzle was solved during the broadcast: “Nothing Beats A Smile” was written there.