The Greens no longer consider the FDP to be reliable – and appeal to their coalition partner to be reasonable. But slowly they realize that they too have to change. Especially her vice chancellor.
Robert Habeck raises his eyebrows and frowns. It’s last Tuesday, Habeck actually wants to talk about wind turbines at a press conference. But now he should say something about the heaters again. To the FDP blocking his law. That is, says Habeck, sighs and spreads his arms: simply “breach of word”. He takes note of that.
From the Vice Chancellor’s lips, that doesn’t just sound like a threat. It is one.
And it is also quite a risk, as the Greens will later admit. Because what if the FDP stays with it? If they just keep blocking? At some point, if you take yourself and your own words seriously, only one thing can follow a continued breach of word: the breach of the coalition. You can’t make a state with those who break their word.
But nobody in the Greens seriously wants the end of the traffic light. As usual, they are counting on the FDP to give in. That in the end she sticks to the words she gives. That she’s playing fair. The calculation could work out with the heaters, maybe. After Habeck’s thunderstorm, there are first encouraging signals.
But what if it happens again at the next opportunity? For example in the household. Some of the Greens fear that it will be even more difficult to negotiate money with FDP leader and finance minister Christian Lindner than with heat pumps. Some therefore believe that things cannot go on like this. That the Greens appear differently in the coalition and have to negotiate differently. Less gullible, harder, simply better. First and foremost her Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck.
Something is different this time
It’s not like the SPD, the Greens and the FDP are fighting for the first time. The story of the traffic light coalition could easily be told as a story of the loveliest quarrels. But this time, as high-ranking Greens see it, something is different. More fundamental, more dangerous. Which makes a change of course more urgent.
The argument about the heaters has been going on for months, although the project has been decided on together again and again. That’s one. But the Greens were really surprised last week when the FDP actually got serious – and blocked the deliberations in the Bundestag.
They had expected that the FDP would publicly continue to rumble against the law. Just to warm up a little from the public heating frenzy. The Greens understand that the FDP has to somehow collect votes after losing state elections and lousy poll numbers. They just thought that the law would still go through the Bundestag as agreed.
One may find that naïve in view of the traffic light’s history of disputes. But the Greens pride themselves on seeing politics as competition for the best argument. And not as a cockfight. They are ill-prepared for the fact that someone keeps hacking anyway – and they sometimes die in beauty.
A plucked feeling
Among the Greens, it is not only the anger at the coalition partners that has grown recently. Many are also disappointed with how many concessions their own leadership makes in negotiations. Even two months after the 30-hour coalition committee at the end of March, some still feel plucked. That went really badly, they say.
Your main expectation remains that the FDP will become reliable again and that Lindner will get his parliamentary group under control. Or alternatively, that Chancellor Olaf Scholz finally northed the FDP. But behind closed doors, some Greens are now also talking about their own omissions and weaknesses.
The voices are diverse, and no clear strategy has yet emerged. Some of the Greens, some of whom are important, have so far only referred to the guilt of others, even in confidential discussions. But the internal debate has been going on for a long time, and some ideas keep popping up in discussions.
