The Brief, powered by The Greens/EFA — Going Dutch in Germany

Oliver Noyan

The cards for the German Bundestag have been reshuffled, and the parties are preparing to launch the old mating ritual known as ‘coalition talks’. Yet, with the new parliament facing an unprecedented degree of fragmentation, these talks are likely to be long and exhausting.

Welcome to a Dutch-style German parliament.

While the Social Democrats are the clear winner of Sunday’s election, this is no guarantee that they will get to lead the new government. With no party managing to get more than 26%, multiple coalition options are on the table, each facing enormous hurdles.

So let’s see how this circle could be squared.

While a continuation of the Grand Coalition between the SPD and the CDU/CSU is technically possible, both parties have ruled it out with SPD party sources telling EURACTIV that this option is off the table “no matter what”.

That only leaves a three-way coalition with the liberals and the Greens. But this would demand a high degree of compromise, and the parties would need to give up some of their core values in exchange for government stability.

But the kingmakers are not exactly prone to compromise if it entails crossing one of their red lines. This was demonstrated after the last election in 2017 when FDP leader Christian Lindner left the negotiation table with the words “It’s better not to govern at all than to govern wrongly”.

There are numerous such red lines in a potential ‘traffic light’ coalition between the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the FDP, especially regarding tax, social and fiscal policy.

While the FDP has made it clear on many occasions that fiscal discipline is one of their preconditions for entering any coalition, the SPD has stressed that there will be no return to austerity on their watch. As the FDP is eying the finance ministry, possibly for Lindner himself, this might be a breaking point for coalition talks.

However, a Conservative-led coalition is even less likely, as the CDU suffered a crushing defeat and recorded its poorest showing in history. Not exactly a mandate from voters to lead a new coalition.

Furthermore, their lead candidate, Armin Laschet, currently risks being dethroned inside his own party. Other high-ranking CDU/CSU party officials say they lack the mandate to lead a new government.

In short, coalition negotiations are likely to drag out for months.

We have already had a glimpse of what Germany’s new political reality might become from its neighbouring country, the Netherlands. After more than six months of fruitless coalition talks, the Dutch are still without a governing coalition with no end in sight.

While Europe can take government uncertainty in Holland in its stride, it cannot afford to wait for months until its biggest economy sorts things out — this could paralyse the whole bloc.

With the French presidential election due in April, there is only a short time frame to reach a coalition agreement in Germany and get some work in Europe done. There’s a couple of months at most before the Franco-German engine runs out of steam again.

This is a pressure that everyone at the negotiation table will feel, and it might just be enough to increase the parties’ willingness to compromise on things that they once considered sacrosanct.

A message from The Greens/EFA: One year after the EU’s migration pact — What needs to change?

The 12 months since the European Commission published its proposals for a new Pact on Migration & Asylum have painfully highlighted the shortcomings of the EU’s approach to asylum. Read the analysis from The Greens/EFA.

The Roundup

Georgia’s exiled former president and opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili plans to return to the country for its upcoming local elections, but Georgia’s current Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili says that “if Saakashvili sets foot on Georgian soil, he will be immediately arrested and brought to prison.”

The European External Action Service is working on a “possible presence on the ground” in Kabul, following the August evacuation of military and embassy staff in Afghanistan. An EU official told journalists that “the question is not if we should be present, but how.”

In the continuous pathway to 2050 climate neutrality, the EU has highlighted the need to reduce transport emissions by 90% and increase the development of alternative fuel forms in its ReFuelEU Aviation initiative. But this plan may be easier said than done, experts say.

And environmental lawmakers have urged EU countries to ramp up their efforts to reduce emissions across the agricultural, buildings and transport sectors. MEPs say that too many member states are consistently falling behind on targets.

Meanwhile, the British army has been placed on standby to deliver fuel amid a post-Brexit shortage of truck drivers, which trigged panic-buying and depleted fuel supplies. British Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said demand is expected to “return to its normal levels in the coming days,” but military personnel are prepared to assist the supply chain if the crisis continues.

Still in the UK: The four main unionist parties in Northern Ireland have formed an alliance to scrap the Irish protocol, agreed by the EU and the UK to maintain a smooth flow of goods on the island, as the UK government steps up its attempts to renegotiate it.

And still… The agency responsible for safeguarding the rights of EU citizens living in the United Kingdom has urged the Home Office to ensure that citizens who have applied late to the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) must have their rights upheld by UK public bodies.

Access to healthcare is a consistent challenge in rural and remote areas, especially for older groups. In EURACTIV’s newest Media Partnership, stakeholders discuss how to improve access to quality health resources and increase well-being in remote areas in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The increasing number of immunocompromised people exposed to COVID combined with the raised risk of co-infections of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and respiratory pathogens creates a double whammy that cannot be overlooked.

Courtesy: (EURACTIV)