Always this FDP: no vaccination, no speed limit, but a discount at the gas station for fat gas guzzlers.

The failure of the plans for a legal obligation to have corona vaccinations on Thursday in the Bundestag only seemed to confirm once again a widespread suspicion in the red-green circles of the traffic light coalition - the smallest partner in the alliance in terms of election results and mandates determined in an inappropriate way, yes undue extent the common policy.

After all, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had announced at the beginning of his term that he would introduce such a compulsory vaccination.

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Manfred Schäfers

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Formally, the subject of compulsory vaccination was a special case, since the coalition had renounced a joint draft law at an early stage due to foreseeable resistance in its ranks (those of the FDP) and instead switched to a procedure without so-called faction pressure.

But it is also a fact: Just like Scholz, Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) had promoted compulsory vaccination.

And Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) even flew in from Brussels for the vote so that the initiative could not fail because of her missing vote.

But it wasn't enough.

Without the "deviators" around FDP man Wolfgang Kubicki, who competed with their own application against compulsory vaccination, things would probably have gone differently.

But now even the weakened version of compulsory vaccination, which only applies to people over 60, has failed – if you will, because of the FDP.

cook and waiter

However, arguments about who is in charge of a government have been going on for almost as long as coalitions have existed.

Gerhard Schröder, as chancellor, brought his SPD's claim to leadership in the red-green alliance to the famous formula of cook and waiter.

The SPD politician was at the zenith of his power, and his reputation had not yet suffered from his closeness to Putin.

However, her successor Angela Merkel took a different view of the balance in the black-red coalition: four years ago, in order to save the chancellery for herself and the CDU, she not only gave the SPD, which had shrunk considerably at the time, the foreign office and the social department, but left it to them Scholz is also responsible for the key finance department.

The Vice-Chancellor took advantage of it, repeatedly snubbed the larger coalition partner and introduced draft legislation without - as usual - clarifying this with the Chancellery in advance.

Scholz has been in the Chancellery himself since December and governs with two junior partners, the Greens and the Liberals.

But what about the interpretation that the FDP, as the smallest partner, has a disproportionately strong influence on the work of the traffic light?

Is the head of the FDP and Finance Minister Christian Lindner really that assertive with his family?

Or to put it another way: is the tail really wagging the dog in Berlin?

The story of real political life is intertwined and far from simple.

Of course there are points with which the FDP has prevailed, above all the expiry of the vast majority of nationwide corona restrictions.

But the coalition's commitment to complying with the debt brake requirement again from 2023 is also one of them.

Lindner likes to promote solid state finances, while the SPD and Greens tend to deal with new debts.

The FDP man wants to be the minister who manages to get by more or less with what the federal government takes in with taxes, just like Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) once did after the financial crisis.