How the SPD, Greens and FDP are now offering themselves to Friedrich Merz - and what their chances are

WELT How the SPD, Greens and FDP are now offering themselves to Friedrich Merz - and what their chances are Ulrich Exner, Thorsten Jungholt, Claus-Christian Malzahn • 5 hours • 8 minutes reading time Despite the federal election campaign, the SPD, Greens and FDP are already eyeing the Union as a possible coalition partner. Unlike CSU leader Söder, Chancellor candidate Merz is not ruling out an alliance with Habeck's party. WELT AM SONNTAG analyses constellations, overlaps and differences. The traffic lights have been switched off, the timetable for the new election on February 23 is set. The election campaign has begun and everything looks like a clear win for the CDU and CSU. The Union is comfortably enjoying more than 30 percent approval in the opinion polls. Of course, it cannot govern alone, and the rush of possible coalition partners is correspondingly large. In particular, the three traffic light parties SPD, Greens and FDP would very much like to take a seat at the next cabinet table - and are already more or less openly vying for the Union's favor. At least the Social Democrats still have some hope of being able to catch up with the conservatives at the end of the election campaign. Like in 2021, when the SPD was up to 16 percentage points behind the Union in the polls two and a half months before the election date, before a laugh from CDU candidate for chancellor Armin Laschet in the flood area turned the mood and Olaf Scholz became Chancellor. But the confidence that this history will repeat itself, that the SPD will once again be able to invite itself to coalition talks as the strongest party in the spring, is rather low, even among the notoriously optimistic current Chancellor. It was the head of government himself who laid the first tracks in the direction of the Union on Wednesday. "Even if we have different political ideas, one thing is clear," said the current head of the remaining red-green traffic light coalition with a view to the upcoming federal election campaign: "We live in one country. We are better off if we can still look each other in the eye even after a dispute." He expressed similar views on Friday in his weekly video message. The Willy Brandt House, the Social Democrats' party headquarters in Berlin, already has written evidence that SPD supporters are warming to the idea of ​​a renewed coalition government with the Union: In a recent survey by the Forsa Institute, two thirds of potential SPD voters are in favor of forming a grand coalition after the upcoming new election. By comparison: among Union supporters, only 44 percent are in favor of such a coalition government. It is a constellation that does not make things any easier for the SPD leadership in the election campaign. On the one hand, it must clearly work out the differences with the Union and, in particular, portray its top candidate Merz as as unsuitable as possible to be chancellor. On the other hand, it must not deepen the rifts with the CDU and CSU too much. This requires a considerable ability to coordinate within the SPD leadership - as was already shown this week with one of the foreseeable central themes of the upcoming election campaign. While SPD leader Lars Klingbeil tried to put the Union under pressure on the issue of pensions and called on them in a newspaper interview to step in to provide a majority for the desired pension stabilization before the new election, SPD Social Affairs Minister Hubertus Heil sent the opposite signal: "You can't get a pension package done with the Union," Heil said on ARD. Reforms are only conceivable after the new elections. Once the election campaign noise that is only just beginning to build up after February 23rd has died down, it will be precisely these kinds of questions that will matter. Could the Union and SPD succeed in agreeing on a joint pension reform that combines social security with demographic development? Is there a common line in foreign, security and defense policy? Will Roderich Kiesewetter and Rolf Mützenich find a common path on the Ukraine issue? How and in what time frame can the economy be stabilized and decarbonized? How will Germany finance this transformation? But even more important will be: Will the next coalition develop a reliable cooperation? Or will the next federal government also drag itself from compromise to compromise - with the result that even more citizens turn away from the Berlin Republic and the parties that support it? Help for Ukraine? The Greens can do more than the SPD The deputy SPD parliamentary group leader Dirk Wiese is certainly sufficiently optimistic. "One thing is clear: we Social Democrats want to continue to bear responsibility for our country," Wiese told WELT AM SONNTAG. The important issues for the SPD are obvious: "We want to make Germany fit for the future as a business and industrial location.