2023-07-09 12:14:43
That too. The traffic light coalition had already been looking forward to a comparatively relaxed summer in which they only had to fight for a little money against child poverty. The tough struggle over gas boilers and heat pumps, which has plowed up the political landscape like no other law since the labor market reform two decades ago, should be forgotten between sunscreen and crumbs of sand, finally ticked off in the last week of parliament, thanks to countless night shifts by politicians and their employees.
Ralph Bollmann
Correspondent for economic policy and deputy head of business and “Money & More” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.
That’s not how it happened. Ironically, the Berlin CDU MP Thomas Heilmann, who does not share the furor of his own party leadership against green climate policy, forced a later vote. Even if everyone in the three traffic light parties keeps their sacred oaths not to change the law anymore, the final decision at the beginning of September will be a reminder of the whole mess, a month before the state elections in Hesse and Bavaria.
Exhausted in the second half
The alliance of SPD, Greens and FDP is now all the more exhausted and exhausted in its second summer break, the first regular after the war and crisis year 2022. And unexpectedly it is already half-time for the government. Elections will be held again in just two years, and next year there will be tricky state elections, especially in the eastern German states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, where the AfD is currently rushing from poll high to poll high.
That in itself would be a reason not to take any more risks, at least not in the key areas of economic, labor market and climate policy. But the past six months weigh at least as badly – the period in which the government had to make a bad experience for the first time: how difficult it is to govern in supposedly calmer times without the acute pressure of an impending energy crisis and the resulting economic crash .
Without a crisis, it becomes more difficult
The fear of icicles in the living room and complete standstill at BASF & Co. had previously held the government together and tamed interest groups. That was basically over since last fall, when the war news became sad routine and the energy emergency lost its terror. At the latest, however, since Robert Habeck’s heating law moved to the top of the political agenda in the spring.
Added to this was the dispute over the federal budget, on which there was no basic agreement for the first time in living memory at Easter. Then the federal and state governments argued loudly about the costs for the refugees, which really put the issue on the political stage for the interested public. And alongside that, other series ran in an endless loop in the background: inflation, the East that was supposedly left behind, the longing of some sections of the population to be rid of all their problems by cooing in front of Putin.
It is not so little what the government has already achieved. Above all, the averting of the gas crisis through the unorthodox expropriation of Russian state-owned companies and the rapid construction of LNG terminals, also a halfway closed attitude in dealing with Putin. Much of what the three parties wrote a year and a half ago on the 140 pages of their coalition agreement (“dare more progress”) is already law.
Minimum wage and citizen money
The coalition has raised the minimum wage and renamed Hartz IV to citizen income in order to settle an eternal contentious issue. Even the urgently needed workers can now come to Germany more easily. And the complex heating law as an introduction to the heat transition has at least been negotiated.
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