For a moment it sounds as if Christian Lindner has changed his mind after much thought. “A lot is in motion. That requires a new respect for differences from everyone, a willingness to learn from one another and also to make compromises,” says the FDP leader. He is in the Hans-Dietrich-Genscher-Haus roughly where he will have to take a position on election evening. So far, Lindner has made it pretty clear across the country what is unlikely to be expected of him: openness to a traffic light alliance with the SPD and the Greens. Well then?
The Free Democrats are ready to “take responsibility for our country”, is the draft of an election call that was unanimously decided in the Presidium and is to be passed this Sunday at a party congress. It does not contain a coalition statement in favor of another party, but there is talk of “common positions” with the Union and the alleged openness of the SPD and the Greens to a “shift to the left”. Anyone who reads the election call with seven “projects” on pensions, digitization and climate protection, for example, will not find a clear rejection of the SPD and the Greens, but anything but advances in this direction. “With the FDP there will be no leftward shift in German politics,” promises Lindner. Of course, this is what the reason for the traffic light might sound like one day.
In any case, a week before the election, the situation of the liberals is dazzling. From surveys and analyzes, they know how close their potential voters are to the traffic light. The more people talk about a possible traffic light alliance, the more the Free Democrats worry about losing votes to the ailing union in the last few meters. If they gave the traffic light – as requested by CSU boss Markus Söder – a clear rejection, that could possibly secure a few votes, but would massively weaken the negotiating position of the FDP after the election – incidentally also in Jamaica talks.
The FDP does not necessarily have to govern
From Lindner’s point of view, there is therefore no reasonable reason to change course. On the one hand, he emphasizes the fundamental openness of the FDP to different constellations. He refers to the Jamaica alliance in Schleswig-Holstein, the black and yellow coalition in North Rhine-Westphalia, the traffic light in Rhineland-Palatinate and now “brand new” the German coalition with CDU and SPD in Saxony-Anhalt.
On the other hand, he countered the belief that the FDP had to rule after Jamaica ended in 2017. It has, he says, “shown that the FDP is willing and able to take tough decisions when fundamental beliefs of the FDP are in question or when others are not willing to enter into a fair partnership”.
When asked about the traffic light, Lindner practically literally repeats his old message. “I lack the imagination what offer Mr. Scholz and Mrs. Baerbock could make to the FDP,” says Lindner, which would be attractive to the FDP “and at the same time acceptable to the party base of the SPD and the Greens”.
However, the repeated advances made by SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz no longer seem to have completely failed. In 2017, the Union and the Greens “ultimately negotiated with each other and only intended the FDP to play a minor role,” said Scholz in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung said. On Thursday he submitted by Handelsblatt after. The Greens’ plans, which based the financing of their election platform on a change in the debt brake, would “collapse like a house of cards,” he said there. “We share this assessment,” comments Lindner happily.
However, it is precisely the Greens with whose help Lindner still hopes to reach the goal, even in the event that Armin Laschet is behind Olaf Scholz on election evening. Since the future chancellor is expected to “not have been elected by more than 70 percent of Germans”, it does not matter at all who “has the tip of the nose” up front. When asked why the Greens should elect Laschet as chancellor in a Jamaica alliance and expect their base to do so much more than the FDP, Lindner refers to recent history: “In 2017 the Greens were absolutely in agreement with the CDU / CSU.”
The FDP leader describes it as his “ambition” to reduce the distance to the Greens as much as possible. The closer you get to the Greens, the more influence you can have “on the formats in which coalitions are discussed”.