The Liberals want to keep the option of a coalition with the Union open.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin The traditional Epiphany meeting of the FDP had to take place without spectators again this year due to the corona. Nonetheless, the invited speakers in the empty Stuttgart Opera House tried to create a certain campaign mood. The two Baden-Württemberg liberals Michael Theurer and Hans-Ulrich Rülke spoke rhetorically against the Greens and Christian Democrats.
In Stuttgart, a “standstill coalition” is governing with the Greens and the Union, criticized deputy parliamentary group leader Michael Theurer. In Berlin, shortly after the election was lost, the CDU switched to opposition mode and pretended that it had “had nothing to do with the past 16 years”.
Theurer accused the Green Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann, who had criticized the “hyper-liberalism” of the FDP in corona policy and climate change, of being “authoritarian”.
The leader of the Liberal parliamentary group in the Stuttgart state parliament, Hans-Ulrich Rülke, described the corona policy of the green-black state government in Baden-Württemberg with the words: “Chaos is welcome, because order has failed.”
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Party leader Christian Lindner, however, heard different tones. The newly sworn in Federal Minister of Finance acted rather statesmanlike, also with a view to the upcoming state elections in four federal states. After all, the liberals there also want to keep the option of a coalition with the Union open – in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein the liberals are already ruling with the Christian Democrats.
Approaching the CDU
“I put my hope in Friedrich Merz,” said Lindner to the designated CDU party leader. Merz will determine the future direction of the conservatives and decide whether “future talks” between the two parties are realistic. “We have no interest in alienating ourselves from the Union,” said Lindner.
At the same time, the FDP party leader also tried to portray the differences of opinion within his party on the subject of mandatory vaccinations as a strength of the liberals. While the party leadership around Lindner tends to be positive about compulsory vaccinations, a group of around 30 MPs around party vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki opposed it with a draft proposal in December.
The Baden-Württemberg parliamentary group leader, Rülke, also expressed himself skeptically at the Epiphany: “I expect those who talk about a general vaccination requirement to first explain how they want to implement it,” demanded Rülke. Michael Theurer had previously warned in an interview with the German Press Agency against presenting the compulsory vaccination as a “panacea”.
Party leader Lindner, however, tried in Stuttgart to appease the dispute. It is understandable that there are different considerations in a liberal group on this issue. However, this “openness to the exchange of views” is representative of society and is therefore to be welcomed.
Praise for corona politics
With regard to other questions about the corona pandemic, Lindner also praised the successes of the traffic light government to date. Parliaments would now again decide on encroachments on fundamental rights, blanket closings could have been prevented, and the booster campaign was the most successful in all of Europe. “With the Omikron variant, moderate restrictions may be necessary,” warned Lindner at the same time.
In the further course of his speech, the party leader held back with election campaign slogans and criticism of the political competition. Instead, he recapitulated the most important key issues of the Liberals in the traffic light government with the SPD and the Greens. In addition to education and social policy, which, according to Lindner, should ensure the rise of “newcomers”, this also includes climate policy.
Here it has already been possible to move the discourse away from the debates about bans such as the speed limit and towards “innovations in research and development”.
In the debate about “green” energies, Lindner supported the decision of the EU Commission to promote natural gas as a bridging technology to renewable energies such as hydrogen and wind power. Nuclear power plants, on the other hand, are not an option for Germany. “Nuclear energy may be CO2-free, but it is anything but sustainable,” criticized Lindner.
In the end, Lindner campaigned again for the CDU, SPD and the Greens. All three parties are to be treated with political respect. “They all have legitimate concerns,” said Lindner, “but we shouldn’t leave them alone in their government responsibilities.”
More: The vaccination requirement and freedom – corona policy causes trouble in the FDP