(Berlin) German Chancellor Olaf Scholz gathered his coalition on Sunday evening to try to ease growing tensions between government partners, which threaten to turn into a crisis.
The disputes for weeks between the Liberals of the FDP, the ecologists and the social democrats of the chancellor, forming the government coalition, concern the climate as well as the financing of the army, transport infrastructure, the 2024 budget.
Beyond that, it is a growing loss of mutual trust between the three partners which is beginning to cause concern and which is resulting in the slowing down of many major projects in Europe’s leading economy.
Fire to the government
“Wherever you look there seems to be fire in the government”, analyzes the weekly on Sunday Der Spiegel“we argue about priorities, we blame each other and everyone is frustrated by the failure to find compromises”.
“The house of the coalition is burning”, summarizes for its part the popular daily Picture.
These domestic tensions have in the meantime spilled over into Brussels, where they have led, for example, to Berlin taking its European partners back in early March by blocking at the last moment a regulation providing for the reduction of CO2 emissions to zero.2 new vehicles. A compromise was finally found on Saturday.
It was therefore at a collective therapy session that the members of this tripartite coalition, unprecedented in Germany, submitted themselves to the chancellery on Sunday evening. The results of their negotiations could not be made public until Monday morning.
“Citizens are waiting for the coalition to achieve results,” warned a Social Democratic leader in the Spiegel.
Objective: to restore order in order to stem growing unpopularity from which the conservative opposition, at the top of the polls, and the AfD (extreme right), now third party in Germany, according to several studies, take advantage.
The Liberals hold the Ministry of Finance and see themselves as guarantors of budgetary discipline. One of their leaders, Christoph Meyer, criticized the other two parties on Saturday for “an dependence on public spending”, in the newspapers of the Funke press group.
“Sometimes you have to snatch the bottle of schnapps out of an alcoholic’s mouth,” he said.
“Progress” and “impediment”
On the climate, the Greens and the FDP have been airing their disagreements for weeks on the subject of combustion engines, the gradual ban on oil or gas heating or the priority to be given to investments in rail or highways .
It was the Ecologist Minister for the Economy and the Climate, Robert Habeck, who set fire to the powder.
“A single party represents progress and the others impediment”, got carried away on Tuesday the number 2 of the government.
The trained philosopher also criticizes the government for “not sufficiently” fulfilling its mission “to bring something to the people, to Germany” and to the climate.
The country has certainly achieved its goal of limiting CO2 emissions in 20222partly thanks to the energy crisis, but there is still a long way to go to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.
Cheese fries
Mr. Habeck in particular criticizes his liberal allies for slowing down his project, which leaked in the press, to ban new oil or gas heaters in 2024.
The tension is such that the vice-president of the FDP, Wolfgang Kubicki, went so far as to affirm, before apologizing, that Mr. Habeck shared with Vladimir Putin “a similar conviction that the state, the leader, the elected knows better than the people what is good for them”.
The SPD urges calm. But the Chancellor, renowned for maneuvering in the face of difficulties rather than deciding on the spot, has every difficulty, a year and a half after coming to power, to gain the upper hand over his restless partners.
“We need leadership more than ever and Olaf Scholz does not show it, because he lets it happen”, criticized Carsten Linnemann, a leader of the conservative opposition.