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The CDU has clarified its internal question of power, the new chairman is Armin Laschet.

A preliminary decision for the next government after the federal election has not yet been made.

Because when the party strategists bend over the political map at the beginning of the super election year, they are looking at a colorful mix of coalitions.

In the meantime, almost everyone rules with everyone in the countries - apart from the AfD.

Alliances of the Greens and Christian Democrats, sometimes including the SPD, are now more common than so-called large coalitions between the Union and Social Democrats.

Classic black-yellow or red-green camp governments only exist in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg.

What happens in the federal states will eventually also prevail in the federal government, and it has always been like that up to now.

Without the red-green forerunners in Hesse and Lower Saxony, Gerhard Schröder (SPD) and Joschka Fischer (Greens) would not have dared a joint federal government in Berlin in 1998.

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And without the coalitions of the Union and the Greens in Wiesbaden and Stuttgart, nobody today would seriously speculate about a black-green government after the next general election.

Obviously, it always takes a regional test for the Berlin example first.

Greens do not commit

So far, the most comfortable sitting in this confusing situation is the Greens, who are involved in eleven of the 16 state governments.

They have not committed themselves to a desired coalition after September 26 - and will probably no longer do so.

Party leader Annalena Baerbock recently said that in the race for the Chancellery you compete as an “underdog”.

In the Corona year, however, “it became clear that the unimaginable can become possible”.

When “the trees are green again” between Easter and Whitsun, it will be decided whether Baerbock or Habeck will lead the party in the federal election campaign and target the Chancellery.

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If you look at the polls, only a black-green coalition or the continuation of the black-red coalition in the federal government would be a variant with a clear parliamentary majority.

But the super election year is not a sure-fire success.

The results of the state elections in Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg on March 14th could shift the arithmetic and simulation games in a completely new direction.

The debate would then no longer just revolve around black-green or a red-red-green federal government with the left-wing party, which is unpredictable in terms of foreign policy.

But also about a traffic light coalition, an alliance of the SPD, Greens and FDP.

Traffic light coalitions have so far been rather rare in the Federal Republic.

In Brandenburg and Bremen, Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals ruled in the early 1990s, in the Hanseatic city the alliance broke up in 1995 after four years in a bitter dispute over a bird sanctuary.

Economic interests and nature conservation got in each other's way.

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But in Mainz the traffic lights have been largely painless for five years.

The Social Democratic Prime Minister Malu Dreyer would like to extend the alliance.

A “very well negotiated coalition agreement” and “very good human interaction” would have made the currently only traffic light coalition in Germany successful, said the head of government last week when taking stock of government work since 2016. The course for the future has been set The guiding principle “We are there for everyone” continues to apply.

A traffic light coalition for everyone, this announcement is now also having a political impact outside of Rhineland-Palatinate - and causes horror among the CDU.

In any case, March 14th is already marked in red in the calendar of the new party leader Laschet.

During a digital retreat by the CDU parliamentary group in Baden-Württemberg, the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister warned urgently against such an alliance.

"That is the most difficult thing: a coalition of the SPD, which covers the social, the Greens, and the FDP, which then covers the economic part - what does the CDU do against it?", He said last week.

"That is the great danger for both Baden-Württemberg and the Federal Republic of Germany."

In fact, surveys suggest that the “traffic light” on March 14th could not only be confirmed in Rhineland-Palatinate.

A second could be added in Stuttgart.

By then, at the latest, the debate about a coalition of the Greens, the FDP and the SPD would not only move the southwest, but the entire republic.

A continuation of the green-black coalition in Baden-Württemberg is by no means inevitable.

On the contrary, the green double point is in the process of preparing a possible color change, at least rhetorically.

Sandra Detzer and Oliver Hildenbrand, the two party leaders of the Southwest Greens, openly insulted the coalition partner CDU at the beginning of December as a “block on the leg”, in climate policy as well as in digitization.

Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) then spoke up soothingly that they had “worked well” with the CDU.

But although election campaigners usually refrain from making clear statements about coalition preferences, Detzer said four months before the state elections that the Greens would prefer to rule with the SPD again - as they did from 2011 to 2016: "Green-red would be our preference." In all probability, however, there will not be a majority for this team, a third partner would have to be found: the FDP.

In contrast to 2016, the liberals would now be quite ready for such an alliance.

Although the FDP consider a “Germany coalition” made up of CDU, SPD and FDP to be preferable for economic and political reasons, state chief Michael Theurer told WELT: “But we are not ruling out cooperation with the Greens.” There have long been representatives of the Greens behind the scenes , SPD and FDP to think about the content and even the division of responsibilities of a green traffic light.

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Theurer had already been open to the traffic light option five years ago, but the federal chairman Christian Lindner vetoed it at the time.

This time there is no headwind from Berlin, and the parliamentary group chairman Hans-Ulrich Rülke has signaled his willingness to negotiate.

Clear demands from the FDP

It is true that content is the prerequisite for a traffic light and not the political theory of color.

The FDP would therefore go into talks with clear demands and not only demand adjustments in the school system, but also a hydrogen strategy for the automotive industry.

"We want to offer a perspective for the environmentally friendly combustion engine and end the purely ideological fixation on battery-electric mobility," said Rülke WELT.

With the Greens and the SPD, he apparently thinks this is possible: "A traffic light could drive an environmentally friendly traffic turnaround that will keep jobs."

And in Berlin?

Unlike after the federal election in 2017, when he broke off the Jamaica talks with the Union and the Greens, Lindner wants to lead his party into government this year - if the conditions are right.

He would prefer a coalition with the CDU under Laschet, as in North Rhine-Westphalia.

“It may be the same in the federal election year 2021 as in the state election year 2017 in North Rhine-Westphalia,” said Johannes Vogel, general secretary of the FDP in Düsseldorf and member of the board of the federal party, WELT.

"The FDP did not make a statement about the coalition, relied on clear content, and in the end a narrow majority for a two-person constellation was achieved - with a CDU chairman Armin Laschet."

However, the polls do not currently show that.

And it is still not at all clear whether Lindner's friend Laschet will be the Union's candidate for chancellor at all - or whether CSU chairman Markus Söder, who has been on green rather than liberal paths for some time, will prevail.

“At the federal level, too, we cannot rule out cooperation with the Greens in a seven-party parliament.

All democratic parliamentary groups must be able to talk, ”says Theurer from Baden-Württemberg, who sits on the presidium of the federal party.

Theurer like Vogel currently consider it to be an "immense challenge" to envision a collaboration primarily with the SPD led by Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans.

"But on principle we shouldn't rule out any constellation in the democratic spectrum, as no other party does either," said Vogel.

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Volker Wissing becomes even clearer.

When the Rhineland-Palatinate Minister of Economics was elected as the new General Secretary of the FDP in September, he announced a remarkable slogan on Twitter: "To replace the CDU after such a long time could be an important signal of a new departure for our country."

Wissing did not forget the black and yellow government from 2009 to 2013, when Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (both CDU) let the Liberals starve to death on the outstretched arm - and shrank from 14.6 percent to 4.8 percent.

And Wissing was also present at the Jamaica negotiations in 2017, when the Union wanted to give the Greens a lot in terms of content and hardly anything to the Free Democrats.

"The clear preference of the CDU for a black-green alliance and the associated distancing from the FDP is also a liberation from the perspective of the Free Democrats," said Wissing WELT.

“There is no longer any black and yellow automatism.

For the FDP: Every coalition that offers us the opportunity to implement recognizable liberal positions must be an option. ”For him, the question is not whether the FDP prefers social liberal, black and yellow, the traffic lights or Jamaica:“ The question for us, in which constellation can we best implement liberal positions? "

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With a Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who would curb his own party leadership with a good election result and land in front of the Greens, a traffic light is a possible scenario.

But if the Greens are ahead of the SPD on election night, such an alliance has little chance.

Because helping a Greens to become chancellor is something that even liberal traffic light friends can hardly imagine.