The Social Democrats of the SPD, who won the German elections, the Greens and the Liberals of the FDP will conduct preliminary discussions on Thursday with a view to forming a coalition, the FDP announced on Wednesday. “I have just proposed to Mr. (Olaf) Scholz (the leader of the SPD), in agreement with the Greens, to meet us tomorrow for a discussion between the three of us, and that will take place”, announced the president of the FDP. , Christian Lindner, at a press conference.
Earlier in the morning, the German Greens had already announced that they wanted to form a coalition with the SPD and the FDP. “We have come to the conclusion that it is now logical to continue discussing with the SPD and the FDP, with a more in-depth search for a common ground”, explained during a press conference the co- president of environmentalists, Annalena Baerbock.
“The biscuit is however far from being eaten”
Greens and FDP, the two chancellor parties after the September 26 elections, thus seem to lean towards a coalition with the Social Democrats and not the Christian Democrats of the CDU-CSU, who came second in the elections. “The discussions of recent weeks have shown that the greatest intersections in terms of content are conceivable in this scheme (with the SPD and the FDP), especially in the field of social policy”, for his part explained the other co-president of the Greens, Robert Habeck. “The biscuit is however far from being eaten” and the agreement is not tied, he however tempered.
“For us, a ‘Jamaican’ coalition (with the Christian Democrats) remains a viable option in terms of content,” Christian Lindner explained. But the conservatives, fallen to a historically low level in the elections, are weakened like never before and a majority of Germans, according to the polls, want them to make a cure of opposition. In this context, the Liberals of the FDP accepted the Greens’ proposal to conduct priority discussions with the Social Democrats.
A three-party coalition would be a first in Germany since 1950. The CDU-CSU, led by the unpopular Armin Laschet, has not officially given up on trying to form a “Jamaican” coalition. Its leaders met with the Liberals on Sunday, then the Greens on Tuesday, to try to convince them to build this team, the only one able to allow them to keep the chancellery after sixteen years of the Merkel era. Their exchanges with environmentalists leaked Tuesday evening in the press, which ulcerated the environmentalists. “Trust also means that everything is not published in the newspapers immediately,” argued Annalena Baerbock.
