Red Alert: Lindner, Scholz, and Habeck Converge in High-Stakes Chancellery Showdown

6:25 pm: The managing director of the digital association Bitkom, Niklas Veltkamp, ​​​​is one of the guests who took part in the highest economic policy discussion with the FDP leader Christian Lindner and the leader of the parliamentary group Christian Dürr. At the request of t-online, he called on the federal government to make a greater commitment to digitalisation.

What is needed is “more speed and action from a united government,” he said. When it was launched, the traffic light coalition announced that it would take a new approach to digitalisation. “He has not yet fully fulfilled this promise,” he said. A survey by Bitkom shows that only around one in three traffic light digital policy projects have been implemented.

To increase Germany’s competitiveness and economic power, a “digital policy boost is needed – and fast.” For him this means more digital administration and less bureaucracy.

5:21 pm: Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) has urgently appealed to his traffic light colleagues not to let the federal government fail. “This is the worst time for the government to fail,” Habeck said in a statement in Berlin. “In fact: the worst time. With what is happening in Ukraine, with regard to the economic situation in Germany, with regard to the American election.”

Habeck continues: “The last few days have been bad for Germany and they have not helped to strengthen trust in the federal government.” But you don’t manage “in a vacuum,” he said. “It is therefore our duty – and this is why we were elected – as a government to focus on the tasks ahead.” That means “implementing the growth initiative as fully as possible” and passing the budget.

The budget “was not a small challenge, but a challenge that can be solved,” said Habeck – and he announced a concrete concession: The billions Intel released, which were actually intended to support the economy, “could make a contribution to the budget of course a gap to reduce”. Recently, the Finance Minister, Christian Lindner, called for this in his paper. If a budget is not reached, then a “long-term hangup” will follow. “Dependence or the ability to act – that this alternative.”

4:59 pm: Chancellor Olaf Scholz urges his traffic light coalition to overcome their differences. He insists that the government must do its job and that pragmatism is the right standard, said the SPD politician in Berlin after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.