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Mainz (AP) - The Rhineland-Palatinate Economics Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) sees an important difference in the style of government between Prime Minister Malu Dreyer (SPD) and Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU).

"Malu Dreyer understands a coalition as a team, Angela Merkel exclusively as a political alliance," said the deputy prime minister on Thursday the "Spiegel".

The basis of a functioning coalition like that of the SPD, FDP and the Greens in Mainz is the willingness of everyone to accept the concerns and perspectives of each other.

"We live that in Mainz," he said three days before the state elections on Sunday.

"If your coalition partner keeps selling you his arguments for days in the hope that he might still be able to convince you, at some point it will get on my nerves," said Wissing, who is also Secretary General of the Federal FDP.

The magic word for him in a coalition is “empathy”.

The FDP state chairman did not make a coalition statement for the time after the state elections.

"We want to continue to govern successfully and shape liberal politics," he said.

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Regarding the role of the CDU in Rhineland-Palatinate, Wissing said that the Christian Democrats have also fought the FDP in Rhineland-Palatinate since Angela Merkel became its federal chairwoman.

"The CDU would like to see us there in the extra-parliamentary opposition."

This is not just a disadvantage for the FDP.

“The behavior of the Union has led to the dissolution of the former bourgeois-conservative camp.

As a result, a black-yellow coalition has become one option among others, but it is no longer an automatic mechanism, ”explained Wissing.

The FDP had achieved 6.2 percent in the state elections five years ago and formed a traffic light coalition together with the SPD and the Greens.

The most recent opinion polls see the Liberals between six and nine percent.

The top candidate for the state elections is State Secretary for Economic Affairs Daniela Schmitt.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210311-99-782922 / 2