State of the coalition: The traffic light coalition is unreliable

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung State of the coalition: The traffic light coalition is unreliable Article by Eckart Lohse • 16 hours • 3 minutes reading time It wasn't that long ago that the opposition could simply enjoy the dispute between a government and its poor poll ratings. The wrinkles on the foreheads of those who were not governing were meant to show concern about the state of the country. Underneath this lay the hope of soon regaining power themselves. This was the case in the Federal Republic for decades. The mechanisms of a functioning party democracy. If the situation were still like this, the Union could rejoice. The state of the traffic light coalition is now such that it takes less time to list the areas in which the Social Democrats, Greens and FDP agree (most likely in the fundamental willingness to continue to support Ukraine) than to go through the long list of disputes. The two most recent examples are the thin catalogue on how to deal with irregular migration after the attacks in Mannheim and Solingen, which has already been watered down in the coalition coordination mill, and the disagreement over tax relief. The questions of whether the FDP will give up its resistance to the pension reform that the SPD has put at the top of its agenda and whether the traffic light coalition will agree on a budget for the coming year are still current. The Chancellor's experience As in every relationship, the same applies to coalitions: if they are fundamentally stable, a dispute is not an existential problem, especially when it concerns a topic that can be narrowed down in terms of content. On the contrary, a difference of opinion that the parties deal with in a solution-oriented manner can be evidence of the stability of the cooperation. The struggle over refugee policy between the CDU and CSU was a major burden on Merkel's last black-red coalition, which the Social Democrats did not initially want anyway. Nevertheless, those governed could have the impression that those in power were aware of their overall responsibility for the country and, for example, steered the ship reasonably safely past the cliffs during the challenging Corona pandemic. There was a basic level of trust among the population. The traffic light coalition, on the other hand, has squandered this trust. This is not even due to the incompetence of individual actors. On average, this is no greater or less than in previous governments. Hardly any chancellor has gained as much government experience at state and federal level as Olaf Scholz. He is a rational man who has no interest in driving the country into the wall. The problem is rather that there are three forces dealing with each other that are too different in their fundamental desires. While the reds and the greens might still be able to get along in some areas, there are too many in which the FDP wants to go in a different direction. The initial rhetoric that the traffic light coalition was a very grand coalition that would form an even broader framework than the black-red coalition, with which the needs of the Germans could be fully satisfied, quickly proved to be an illusion. Söder cockily goes one step further What is likely to bother people more than the question of whether they will have to heat their homes with electricity a little sooner or later is the reliable unreliability of the traffic light coalition. Angela Merkel would have preferred to "govern through" rather than constantly have to make compromises. But the fact that traffic light captain Scholz, of all people, started with the pithy saying that whoever asks him for leadership will get it is a top candidate for the joke of the legislative period. The traffic light parties have barely managed to struggle through to a compromise when it is being questioned. The legislative package on migration policy is to be passed this week. In the meeting of the SPD parliamentary group on Tuesday, the critics seem to have become so clear that the Chancellor had to raise the possibility of a vote of confidence. Well, the Union can rub its hands together! The polls make a new edition of the traffic light coalition as likely as a bike ride to the moon. The chairman of the small Union sister, CSU boss Markus Söder, is cocky and goes one step further and categorically rules out a coalition with the Greens. We've got it! As if the situation in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg weren't bad enough. If the traffic light coalition fails, either prematurely or on election day, the problem is not that Scholz would end up in the league of short-term chancellors Erhard and Kiesinger. Rather, it would be a sign that the centrist parties, even under the impression of the rapid and lightning-fast growth of the AfD and BSW, do not seem to have understood that the model of party democracy that they have been pursuing for the good of the country is in danger.