Happy faces: Olaf Scholz (r.), SPD candidate for chancellor and acting Federal Minister of Finance, Annalena Baerbock (hidden), federal chairwoman of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, Robert Habeck (3rd from right), federal chairman of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, Christian Lindner (2nd from left), parliamentary group chairman and party chairman of the FDP, Norbert Walter-Borjans (left), SPD federal chairman.
(Photo: dpa)
The slogan of the traffic light parties is: “Dare to make more progress”. Willy Brandt was obviously the godfather who wanted to “dare more democracy”. Today it is no longer about democracy – or not only. Today everyone wants to be progressive.
In the first few months, the coalition of red, yellow and green will primarily be measured by whether it can finally get the pandemic under control. When the interregnum of the executive government under Chancellor Angela Merkel is over, it goes very quickly: Then suddenly it is Olaf Scholz’s corona figures.
The future Chancellor is without a doubt the winner of the year. He won the elections by surprise and conducted the most silent coalition negotiations of the past decades.
To this end, he negotiated one more ministerial post for the Social Democrats than could be expected from the SPD’s point of view.
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The Greens, who already felt themselves to be the Chancellor’s party, but then only won 14 percent in the election, are at first sight well served. You get the Foreign Office, after Joschka Fischer for the second time. Robert Habeck, the new strong man of the Greens, becomes Super Minister for Economy and Climate.
FDP leader Christian Lindner negotiated excellently. He himself took over the finance department as the first liberal in 50 years. This is rounded off with the liberal core issues of education and justice. A real trophy is the Ministry of Transport, which the Greens also absolutely wanted.
There is the old political wisdom: You win elections three times – at the ballot box, in coalition negotiations and then in government. If you apply this yardstick, the Greens have lost in the end and the SPD and FDP won. Why? Habeck has to do the trick of creating successes in converting German industry towards climate neutrality.
He has to explain to his party and the environmental activists why he is not advancing climate protection even more radically. On the other hand, he wants to challenge Olaf Scholz as candidate for chancellor in the upcoming election. Therefore he will have to act pragmatically.
He cannot afford to alienate industry and medium-sized businesses. That is not Habeck’s temperament either; as state minister in Kiel he has shown that he can find the middle ground. The house in Scharnhorststrasse is considered by many to be ungovernable. The economics ministers and vice chancellors Philipp Rösler and Sigmar Gabriel failed with a crash.
Lindner’s test
For Christian Lindner, the Federal Ministry of Finance is the culmination of his political career. But the practical test is only now coming. Every sentence from a German finance minister can move the stock markets. The workload is grueling. The G20, G7 and the political stage in Brussels demand everything from every federal finance minister.
In addition, he has to fend off the desires of his cabinet colleagues almost every week. The big traffic light projects cost a lot of money: basic child benefits, super depreciation, 400,000 publicly funded apartments in four years, the share pension, care bonus. All of this needs to be financed.
It will not be possible to fully impose the costs of climate protection on citizens and entrepreneurs. There must be relief elsewhere here. The coalition agreement does not yet contain any unreasonable financial policy. But that doesn’t mean anything. These will come.
More on this: This is how the departments are distributed in the new cabinet