It will not be an easy task as finance minister in a traffic light government to bring together the many spending requests and the limited financial leeway.

Nevertheless, there are two candidates for this office: Robert Habeck, the co-chairman of the Greens, and Christian Lindner, the party and parliamentary group leader of the FDP.

Neither of them have distinguished themselves as financial politicians in the past, but their party friends can hardly imagine a better finance minister.

Baden-Württemberg's Green Finance Minister Danyal Bayaz publicly promotes Habeck, Lindner's right-hand man Marco Buschmann for his boss.

Although personnel issues are not supposed to be clarified until the end of the coalition negotiations, the debate about the allocation of posts is in full swing.

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Christian Geinitz

Business correspondent in Berlin

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Julia Löhr

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Manfred Schäfers

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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There are 14 ministries in the outgoing federal government.

If it stayed that way, there would be 15 offices with the Chancellery.

This will not be a sure-fire success in view of the three partly very different parties, each of which will be visible in the next government and does not want to disappoint its own voters.

That the Treasury Department is so sought after is because it is particularly influential.

Over the past twelve years, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) and Olaf Scholz (SPD) have shown what finance ministers can achieve.

The CDU man became a figurehead of the Union with the "black zero".

Despite his debt record in the Corona years, the Social Democrat is about to move into the Chancellery.

Some climate, others money

So now Lindner and Habeck are fighting over who can make a name for themselves in the office - or at least try to. As things stand, Lindner has better chances. It is true that the Greens did better than the FDP and thus, if the wish-you-what at the end of the coalition negotiations runs according to the usual pattern, after the SPD the first access to a ministry. But if the Greens should actually reach for the Ministry of Finance, the FDP could in return claim responsibility for climate protection. Which would not be in the interests of the Greens.

There are many indications that there will be a super climate ministry in the next federal government, in which other departments will be absorbed, such as the environment ministry and the energy section from the economics ministry. During the election campaign, the Greens left no doubt that they want this ministry. Which is why it came as no surprise when FDP leader Christian Lindner mentioned it a few days ago as a matter of course as part of the future cabinet tableau. The Greens and the SPD still disliked this because the negotiators did not actually want to talk about items in public, but first about the content. Lindner then spoke of a "mistake".

If it comes to the higher-level climate ministry - which is still expected in Berlin - then the Greens would probably have the first access to it. The question remains who has access. Since Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock got an election result that was disappointing for the party, it could be Habeck. It is quite possible that he would take the climate ministry and become vice chancellor at the same time. But if he should become finance minister or, as was also discussed, interior minister, Baerbock could become climate minister. However, she is currently being traded more as a possible foreign minister.

The question of how climate protection will be anchored organizationally in the next government is also important because further decisions depend on it.

For example, what the Ministry of Economic Affairs should be responsible for in addition to the economy and foreign trade policy if energy should no longer be part of it.

There have been different constellations in the past.

Under the SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, business and work were united in one ministry - a combination that was particularly well received in business and less so in the SPD.

It later became a Ministry of Economics and Technology.

Such a combination - today it would probably be called digitalization instead of technology - has advocates in the ranks of both the Greens and the FDP.