Scholz Under Fire: Lindner Slams Chancellor’s ‘Calculated Cuts’ as Tensions Rise

Olaf Scholz no longer wants to subject the country to Lindner’s behavior and fires him. The leader of the FDP responds. All developments in the news blog.

2:43 am: After the collapse of the traffic light coalition, the co-chair of the SPD, Saskia Esken, says that she expects Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) to run again as a candidate for chancellor in the case of new elections next spring. “It will be Scholz’s last, we are entering the election campaign together and we are convinced that we will win the election,” he said on “RTL Direkt” on Wednesday night.

The Chancellor has now taken the right measures and negotiated for a long time, continued Esken. The problem was the FDP. “It was not the Chancellor’s fault that we did not come to an answer,” said the SPD politician.

0.54 am: When Christian Lindner tried to explain the traffic light away on Wednesday night, other FDP ministers stood by the former finance minister, including Marco Buschmann (Justice) and Bettina Stark-Watzinger (Education). However, one person was missing: Transport Minister Volker Wissing.

This caused consternation among political observers. The newspaper “Bild” then speculated whether Wissing would disrupt the traffic lights. As this government no longer exists after Lindner was kicked out by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and the FDP subsequently withdrew from the coalition, Wissing would have to join another party .

The “Bild” brings the lack of the former minister of transport to the Social Democrats. Wissing’s enthusiasm for traffic lights could be a motivation; The FDP politician was still part of the traffic light government when he was in Rhineland-Palatinate and he always praised this political constellation. It is also said that he was against abolishing the traffic lights in the federal government until the end – and with this stance he opposed the FDP leader Lindner.

0.05 am: The departure of Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Budapest, which was actually planned for Thursday morning, has been significantly delayed due to the break in the traffic lights government. The reason is the dismissal of the FDP ministers by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the appointment of the interim ministers early in the afternoon. As a result, Scholz will not be able to participate in the meeting of the European Political Community, but will only come to the informal EU summit in the Hungarian capital.

11:50 pm: The co-parliamentary leader of the Green Party, Britta Haßelmann, accuses Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) of causing the coalition to break up destructively. The traffic lights failed to get the budget together for 2025, Haßelmann said after a special meeting of the Green parliamentary group. “The finance minister didn’t do his job. And that honestly makes me angry.”

11:27 pm: The chairman of the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB), Yasmin Fahimi, considers the dismissal of Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) to be logical. “Christian Lindner has made himself a national risk for stable and good development,” explains the former SPD politician. “With the attack on fair wages, secure pensions and adequate investments for the future.” Fahimi called on “all responsible democrats” to pull themselves together and make the most urgent decisions for the economy and social security: “There must now be no retreat to the mode of an election campaign alone.”

11:18 pm: The FDP withdraws all its ministers from the federal government. This was announced by the leader of the parliamentary group Christian Dürr in Berlin. The FDP therefore ends the three-way traffic light coalition. Dürr said that the decision on the direction of “economic change” was not possible in the traffic light coalition. The Chancellor’s proposals did not even go far enough to bring Germany back economically. Now it is up to the voters to make a decision about the direction of the country. Dürr said that the FDP in the Bundestag would continue to be constructive in the remaining time of the electoral period. Individual projects will then be discussed between each democratic faction.