Berlin’s trafficlight coalition avoided disaster on January 1st as the liberal Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) narrowly voted to continue propping up the beleaguered Scholz chancellorship by a razor-thin 52% to 48% margin.
The smallest component in Germany’s threeway social-democratic led coalition, the fiscally conservative FDP, is noted to be increasingly at odds with Scholz and the Green Party, especially in light of a recent €60 billion budgetary scandal that sent German finances into disarray in November.
Approximately one-third of the party’s 76,000-strong membership took part in the non-binding resolution which, if passed, would have potentially heralded fresh elections in the country.
The pro-market Europhile FDP has been haemorrhaging votes ever since deciding to join the Greens and Social Democrats following the 2021 German election. Now, a grassroots rebellion is building over participation in the government. Supporters of the initiative view it as high time for the FDP to cut their losses on the coalition before they suffer permanent damage on the national stage.
Monday’s membership vote was the initiative of grassroots FDP members from the central German city of Kassel in response to the party losing official representation from regional parliaments in Bavaria and Hesse after poor election results in October.
The party’s chances of reaching the 5% threshold required to enter the Bundestag are now uncertain. Their low-tax voter base is in rebellion against continued support for the left-leaning coalition while the German economy continues to endure spiking energy costs and a costly green transition.
Despite the result favouring staying in the coalition, former FDP MP Matthias Nölke, who launched the petition, said that the party’s top brass were in dire need of an urgent change of strategy if it wanted to survive beyond the 2025 election.
Co-initiator of the vote Alexander Rackow directly linked the result to dissatisfaction against current FDP leader and German Finance Minister Christian Lindner in what could be the firing shot of a future leadership election.
There is some speculation that the FDP may use a bad electoral showing in the upcoming European elections as an opportunity to leave the traffic light coalition in a move that would force snap elections.
Both the centre-right CDU and the populist AfD are capitalising on the ruling coalition’s many failures around energy, migration, and foreign policy. Last month, AfD won a mayoral election in Saxony, giving the party its second mayor in Germany.
The plight of the FDP echoes that of Germany’s mainline communist party Die Linke, itself fighting off threats of dissolution as German politics continues to rearrange itself in the face of multiple internal and external challenges.
