Berlin The SPD general secretary Lars Klingbeil had to announce a result of the first exploratory talks for a traffic light government. “It will continue from Monday,” said Klingbeil on Thursday evening after meeting the exploratory teams from the Greens and the FDP. “All the subjects were on the table,” he said. They want to advise them intensively and thus also come to an agreement.
FDP General Secretary Volker Wissing also drew a positive conclusion. The liberals are thematically far apart from the SPD and the Greens in many respects. “There are issues where it won’t be easy,” said Wissing. “But we have seen that there is a willingness to take even deep hurdles.” He is confident that it will be a “good week”.
The SPD, the Greens and the FDP did not say what content was discussed. Their vow of silence is currently forcing the potential Ampel coalition partners to use flowery formulations. It is about advancing the country “in a culture of modernity, participation and respect”, said SPD leader Saskia Esken on Thursday before the start of the three-stage explorations. FDP leader Lindner had previously emphasized that the Greens and FDP could form a “progress-friendly center” in a coalition. And Green leader Annalena Baerbock said Germany could not afford a long hangover.
It is still unclear what goals a red-green-yellow alliance will actually set itself after successful coalition talks. Business and trade unions are all the more clear in formulating what they expect from the future government.
The Federation of German Industries (BDI) has listed its demands in a seven-page paper that is available to the Handelsblatt.
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“The next decade will determine Germany’s pioneering role in the field of modernization and investment,” it says. “This requires an ambitious program.” The BDI lists a total of 26 points that it believes are important in order to strengthen the location, shape the climate-neutral industry and strengthen cooperation at European and international level.
These include, for example, avoiding tax increases in order to support private investments, a powerful industrial policy, better start-up funding, shorter planning and approval procedures, competitive energy prices or a reliable market framework for the transformation of entire industries.
Massive investments in the infrastructure are necessary.
(Photo: imago / Stefan Zeitz)
The association is also committed to “strengthening strategic sovereignty in critical technologies, goods and services”. Because the supply bottlenecks for preliminary products are now making German industry difficult to cope with. In August it produced four percent less than in the previous month, which is the sharpest decline since the slump during the first corona wave in spring 2020.
DIHK calls for an “investment push”
The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) also expects better framework conditions from a traffic light coalition so that companies can invest. “Digitization, climate protection and the shortage of skilled workers are the most important issues for companies,” says DIHK President Peter Adrian. “We now need a coalition agreement that enables investment in Germany to be pushed back.” In the latest IHK company barometer, the companies surveyed rated most of the location conditions as worse than they were four years ago.
The skilled workers shortage, which was only temporarily dampened by the corona pandemic, is also shifting the focus to the skilled trades president Hans Peter Wollseifer. “The prosperity and economic strength of our country can only be secured in the future with enough skilled craftsmen and women.” is equivalent.
“We need high-performance educational institutions, more digital educational offers and real equivalence between vocational and academic education,” demanded Wollseifer. At the beginning of the apprenticeship year, around 30,000 apprenticeship positions were still vacant in the skilled trades alone.
On the way to more climate-friendly mobility.
(Photo: Paul-Langrock.de)
Many business associations had made no secret of the fact that they preferred a Jamaica coalition to a red-green-yellow government. But in the meantime, “nobody can turn a blind eye to the traffic lights”, says Ludwig Veltmann, managing director of the ZGV association of medium-sized companies. “The probability for other constellations tends towards zero.”
If the future government did not burden them with higher taxes and new requirements under pressure from the left wing of the party, entrepreneurs could also live with a traffic light, said the federal manager of the Federal Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, Markus Jerger.
The medium-sized companies are directing their hopes on the liberals. “We rely on the FDP as an economic corrective and regulatory guide,” says Jerger. ZGV boss Veltmann hopes that the FDP can bring its economic policy competence to bear in the finance and foreign ministries.
Because conflicts in a traffic light alliance are likely to arise primarily on the issues of taxes and the budget – and on the question of how the huge investments for the transformation of the economy are to be financed. For example, the FDP strictly rejects the tax increases demanded by the SPD and the Greens, party leader Christian Lindner has defined this as a red line for any coalition negotiations.
Trade unions are calling for the welfare state to be expanded
It will be difficult for the unions to swallow. In order to keep the state capable of acting and to shape the transformation, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) is calling for additional investments of 45 billion euros per year over ten years. “The debt brake must not be a brake on investment,” warns DGB boss Reiner Hoffmann.
“We have to invest massively in order to make Germany future-proof.” Every euro that is not invested now, future generations would have to pay double or triple. The DGB also supports the demands of the SPD and the Greens to stabilize the pension level at 48 percent and to further expand the welfare state.
That in turn calls employers to act. “In Germany we need free travel for far-reaching reforms in order to secure growth, employment and prosperity,” warns the President of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA), Rainer Dulger. The debt borrowed would have to be repaid and the social security systems stabilized. “None of this goes against, but only with the economy.”
In its position paper, the BDI also points out that Germany cannot survive alone in international competition. The new government must therefore resolutely represent German positions on foreign trade policy in the European Council. Germany needs “a strong European alliance that is committed to the transatlantic partnership and knows how to visibly assert itself against China,” says the paper. Free trade agreements with Canada, the Mercosur Alliance, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand must finally be ratified or negotiated.
So much to do for the future coalition, which is currently still busy finding intersections and overcoming what divides.
More: All the news about government formation in our news blog.