The deputy SPD federal chairman Achim Post has called for faster agreements from the traffic light coalition in Berlin in the future without open dispute. “What the traffic light delivered in the most difficult times is often really okay,” said Post to the German Press Agency in Düsseldorf. “But last year that was too often overshadowed by arguments. Here we have to get on our own and simply get better.”
Society has become more heterogeneous and government coalitions have naturally become more heterogeneous, said Post, who is also SPD deputy parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag. “You have to come to agreement more quickly on all the different approaches.” That is also the big task for the traffic light government in 2024. “And the SPD will make its contribution to this.”
“So many crises in a row”
The deputy SPD chairwoman Anke Rehlinger admitted that the traffic lights had made mistakes. “Of course mistakes happened – quite a few, to be honest,” said the Saarland Prime Minister of the German Press Agency. “It should under no circumstances be allowed to continue in this way.” But one should not “give the impression that politics is able to walk on water in such times of crisis.”
Rehlinger appealed for understanding: “We have probably never had so many crises in a row, and now side by side, in the history of the Republic,” she said. “The fact that things don’t always go smoothly is probably partly in the nature of things.”
The insecurity felt by the population everywhere must be countered with “good government craftsmanship and communication not only about the now, but also beyond the day.” Politicians should not “just be in repair mode without having a perspective and saying where we can be in ten years,” said Rehlinger.
The Green Party leader Ricarda Lang also called for a different approach between the traffic light partners SPD, Greens and FDP. “We stand by this coalition and it will last until the end of the legislative period; we still have enough to do,” Lang told the “Tagesspiegel”. To do this, however, the three parties would have to revise their style of government. “I think we need to get away from the game of winning and losing.” Lang emphasized that each party in a coalition can retain its own profile. “It’s not about all parties suddenly having to want the same thing.”
Better federal-state relations required
Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) called for the federal government to deal differently with the states. “The relationship has never been as bad as it is now. That’s not an assessment from me, SPD prime ministers also say that,” said Kretschmer to the German Press Agency in Dresden. “The idea that here in the Free State all district administrators and mayors represent a uniform point of view and that we as the state government then say, ‘We’ll do it differently anyway’, is simply not possible. But that’s exactly the case in the relationship between the federal and state governments.”
In Kretschmer’s opinion, this resulted in many craftsmanship errors and policy-making that ignored the actual needs of the country. In many respects, Germany is heading in the wrong direction in terms of economic policy.
