Berlin Hardly anyone in the SPD, Greens and FDP felt like celebrating the day after the Berlin elections. Not with the Liberals, who suffered their fifth consecutive defeat in a state election. Not with the Social Democrats, who now have to fear for the office of governing mayor after the triumph of the CDU. And the Greens had to hide their disappointment that they missed their target again, the Red City Hall.
“Yesterday evening was a bitter evening for the Berlin SPD,” said the previous governing mayor, Franziska Giffey. How things will continue in the capital is open. After the election debacle, voices could be heard from the Berlin SPD that wanted a new start without Giffey. With the Social Democrats, you don’t just have to worry about Giffey’s future and your own weakness in the capital.
The outcome of the election should also have consequences for the mood in the traffic light coalition. In the federal SPD it is feared that the FDP would like to make a name for itself after another defeat at the expense of the other two coalition partners. Many coalition members in the SPD and Greens are already finding that the Liberals are going it alone too many times.
SPD leader Saskia Esken publicly rejected this fear. She would have wished that the FDP made it into the Berlin House of Representatives. However, she does not believe that the FDP’s election disaster would make work within the federal government more difficult. The traffic light partners worked together in a spirit of trust.
Shortly before, FDP leader Christian Lindner had also emphasized the successes of the traffic light coalition in Berlin and announced that he would stick to the previous strategy of the liberals in the traffic light coalition. At the same time, Lindner named topics on which the FDP now wants to score. For the Greens in particular, his announcements should sound like a declaration of war.
Election campaign issues
One conclusion from the Berlin election result, said Lindner, was that “policy against the car is not in the interest of the people”. Transport policy was a key campaign issue in the capital, with the Greens on the one hand and the CDU and FDP on the other attacking each other.
Berlin’s top candidate Kai Wegner used the federal party’s stage to campaign for an alliance with the SPD or the Greens, as in a government statement.
(Photo: IMAGO/Future Image)
But the issue has also been causing conflict in the traffic light coalition for weeks. When speeding up planning and approval processes, the FDP got into a dispute with the Greens over the question of whether this should also apply to the construction of new motorways. After Lindner’s announcement, it is hardly to be expected that the Liberals will now give way. Especially since faster planning and approval processes are also part of a second focus that Lindner mentions: “The traffic light only has a chance of re-election if we bring the country back on the path to economic success,” he said.
On the one hand, the sentence contains a commitment to the coalition, on the other hand, the FDP leader links this with an expectation of the SPD and the Greens. From Lindner’s point of view, economic success requires “more market freedom” and “less burdens”. However, the Social Democrats and the Greens are not very impressed by the liberal tax relief plans. This also applies to the tougher course in migration policy that Lindner is calling for.
>> Read here: Seven lessons from the election to the House of Representatives
Lindner thus names topics that played a role in the Berlin state election campaign and were of particular use to the CDU. The Christian Democrats gained 10.2 percentage points and became the strongest force. Berlin’s top candidate Kai Wegner used the federal party’s stage to campaign for an alliance with the SPD or the Greens, as in a government statement. “We see that the city is divided. Now is not the time for tactics. Now is the time to do it,” he said.
The FDP, on the other hand, was expelled from the Berlin House of Representatives. The party only achieved 4.6 percent in the repeat election, in 2021 it was 7.1 percent.
Discussions about transport policy
The traffic policy could not only become a sticking point in the formation of the government in Berlin, but will probably also affect the climate in the traffic light. In any case, the CDU and FDP can feel confirmed by a survey by the Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy, which prepared the annual mobility monitor on behalf of the Academy for Technical Sciences. Accordingly, the vast majority of Germans continue to rely on the car, which also applies to large cities and Berlin.
SPD faction deputy Detlef Müller shared Lindner’s opinion that there should be no politics against the car. “The election put a damper on Berlin’s transport policy, if not a stop sign. Playing modes of transport off against each other is useless.” Müller recommended that the Liberals no longer publicly alienate the government. “The FDP can also confidently point to its successes in the traffic light coalition,” he said.
CDU triumphs in election to the House of Representatives
On the other hand, the Berlin member of the Bundestag and transport policy spokesman for the Greens parliamentary group, Stefan Gelbhaar, said the voters had “appreciated our transport policy course”. The Greens had “received a stable result” “with a tough message of change”. The FDP would have set the construction of the A100 city highway. “That hurt her.”
>> Read here: Fateful year for the liberals – an insecure FDP wants to encourage itself
For the FDP, it is the fifth electoral defeat in a row since the 2021 federal election. In October, it failed at the five percent hurdle in Lower Saxony. And in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, the FDP was kicked out of the state governments in 2022. In Saarland she missed the leap into the state parliament. The question is discussed in the party: How high is the price that the FDP has to pay for the traffic light alliance in the federal government?
Lindner pushes doubts aside at the traffic light
As a precaution, Lindner dismissed all doubts about the traffic light on Monday. The party adjusted the strategy a few months ago and will not change it, said the FDP leader. According to him, it consists of three elements: The aim is to show that Germany is well governed. You got through the crisis well, the traffic light reacted “appropriately and decisively”.
On this point, Lindner sounded similar to SPD leader Esken: The crisis management neither led to a “hot autumn” nor to a “winter of anger”, according to Esken.
>> Read here: The traffic light cannot agree on these central projects
After the crisis management, Lindner now sees further need for action. In this way, the coalition should fulfill the promises of modernization with which it once started. The FDP leader mentions, for example, the acceleration of planning and approval procedures, the reduction in bureaucracy and digitization.
But even if you want to emphasize the joint successes more, Lindner makes it clear that the Liberals will continue to block some of the coalition partners’ projects in the future. “In the traffic light coalition, we are the guarantor of centrist politics.”
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