No peace in the coalition: traffic light leaders meet again

Last Wednesday, the federal cabinet approved the bill for the heating law by Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Building Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD). In essence, this stipulates that from January 1, 2024, every newly installed heating system must be operated with 65 percent renewable energy. But the FDP in particular is trying to push the Greens along on the subject.

>> Read here: That is in the new heating law

This became clear most recently at the FDP federal party conference at the weekend. In a leading motion, the Liberals called for “major changes” to the Building Energy Act. The FDP wants a climate protection policy “that takes people with it instead of patronizing them,” said FDP Secretary General Bijan Djir-Sarai.

The Greens, especially Economics Minister Habeck, are annoyed by the criticism, which also comes from the SPD. “Climate protection should be made a lifestyle issue, a milieu issue, a party issue,” said Habeck at the weekend. However, Habeck did not fall into the trap of playing the offended coalition partner and expressed understanding for the dispute. According to Habeck, climate protection is now becoming concrete. “Of course, there are now debates.”

Green parliamentary group leader Katharina Dröge reminded the FDP that they had made a decision together in the coalition committee. “Leading a party or parliamentary group responsibly in times of government means standing by what you have united,” said Dröge.

However, the Liberals leave no doubt that they will strive for further changes during the deliberations in the Bundestag, i.e. compromise to compromise of compromise.

Startup Law

While the FDP is putting the brakes on the Greens’ climate protection projects, the eco-party is now opposing liberal prestige projects.

Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) wants to promote start-ups with the Future Financing Act. To do this, he wants to simplify the employee equity participation model, which gives start-ups a good argument when looking for skilled workers. The law is intended to solve the much-criticized “dry income” problem, in which employees have to pay tax on their company shares before they can turn them into money. A project that the Greens generally welcome.

But the finance minister also included a few FDP points in the draft law that the Greens don’t want to let him get away with. “The draft law also hides projects that don’t help the start-ups at all and that they don’t attach any importance to themselves,” says the deputy leader of the Greens, Andreas Audretsch.

For example, Lindner wants to increase the tax allowance for employee capital participation to 5,000 euros. Audretsch complains that such a high amount is not at all relevant for start-ups, but only helps the large corporations. “We want a real start-up law, no funding for large corporations through the back door.” The Greens parliamentary group therefore does not want to support Lindner’s draft in this form and calls for improvements.

Port of Hamburg

The traffic light also argues about topics that seemed to have been ticked off long ago. This is, for example, the entry of the Chinese state shipping company Cosco at the Tollerort terminal in the Port of Hamburg.

Six ministries around Robert Habeck’s economic department had spoken out against the entry last autumn. From their point of view, China should not be allowed to gain access to sensitive infrastructure in Germany. However, the Federal Chancellery pushed through Cosco’s participation, albeit in a slightly reduced form. The house of the former first mayor of the Hanseatic city, Olaf Scholz (SPD), considered this necessary so that Hamburg no longer lost market share to the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp.

At the time, the Tollerort terminal was not classified as critical infrastructure. In the meantime, however, the company operating the Port of Hamburg has registered the terminal as critical infrastructure – and there is some evidence that this should have happened before the government dispute last autumn.

So the controversy is heating up again. According to government circles, Habeck’s Ministry of Economic Affairs considers a new examination necessary. The Chancellery, on the other hand, apparently wants nothing to do with it. It is possible that the question of the renewed examination cannot be answered clearly from a legal point of view, so that a political dispute is inevitable. If there is a re-examination, the next part of the dispute should follow immediately.

Working time measurement

There is also a dispute within the coalition over the issue of recording working hours. Judgments by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Federal Labor Court had caused legal uncertainty in companies. Federal Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil (SPD) therefore presented a draft law last week which – apart from a few exceptions – provides for an obligation to record working hours electronically.

According to labor law experts, Heil is interpreting the court judgments more strictly than necessary, since neither the ECJ nor the Federal Labor Court make electronic recording mandatory.

There is already resistance in the FDP. The draft law that has become known is “the personal ideas of the Minister of Labor, which we are critically examining,” said the Labor Market Policy Spokesman for the Liberals, Pascal Kober. He could not imagine that the plans would become law unchanged.

Household

Finance Minister Lindner has been arguing with the other ministries about the budget draft for the coming year for weeks. The departments are demanding additional expenditure worth billions, Lindner insists on compliance with the debt brake. The finance minister expressly believes that restrictions are also necessary for social spending, which annoys the SPD and the Greens.

The dispute is not just about the twelve billion euros for basic child security. The care reform recently passed in the cabinet is so poor that the Greens want to improve it.

“The chancellor promised respect during the election campaign,” said deputy leader of the Greens, Maria Klein-Schmeink, to the Handelsblatt. “The current care reform does not deliver on this promise.” The reform was slimmed down further and further with the intervention of the finance minister – although it was agreed in the coalition agreement that the costs for the pension contributions of caregiving relatives and the training levy should be financed from taxes.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) is accused of not being able to push through and instead raising insurance premiums to a record high. In the coalition, he therefore has the reputation of being the “weakest minister”, as one coalition member describes it.

In the dispute over the desolate finances of the statutory health insurance funds, the anger is likely to repeat itself. Here it is already being prepared that Lauterbach will shift the greatest burden onto the insured – with the result that social security contributions will continue to rise.

More: “Some things cannot be financed at the moment” – Lindner calls on traffic lights to save