FDP election campaign party conference: Lindner: Germany must rely on technologies for climate protection

For the last week of the election campaign, the FDP set a new goal of achieving the bronze medal in the party competition.

Both the FDP chairman Christian Lindner and the deputy chairman Nicola Beer, who opened an FDP election campaign convention on Sunday, promised that the FDP could become the third strongest force in the federal elections.

In opinion polls, the Greens are currently in third place behind the SPD and Union parties.

Johannes Leithäuser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Lindner invoked the "value of freedom", which may be felt more strongly than before after the restrictions of the Corona crisis.

He emphasized that there should never be a lockdown in Germany again, and linked the call with the fact that everyone should make use of the opportunity to be vaccinated against the corona virus.

The FDP chairman also related the postulate of freedom to climate protection.

Instead of prescribing the technical ways to save pollutant gases, scientific freedom must remain valid there.

"There is no prosperity without performance"

The event planners of the Free Democrats got help on the topic of climate on Sunday from the industrial manager Wolfgang Reitzle, among others. He campaigned vehemently for ideas of the Free Democrats in climate policy, such as a stronger focus on green hydrogen and synthetic fuels. He countered green “cargo bike drivers” and “Bullerbüberliners” with the statement: “There is no prosperity without performance”. Lindner paid tribute to Reitzle by pointing out that it would be good to hear an engineer on this subject instead of the politicians, sociologists and theologians who otherwise talk about it so often.

Greater efforts in education policy and a restructuring of the pension insurance are also issues with which the FDP wants to attract more attention of its own in the last week of the election campaign. Lindner contradicted statements of the SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz that the pension finances were stable, and campaigned for his party's plan to base part of the pension finances on a capital stock made up of shares. The FDP chairman recalled that annually 100 billion euros of pension payments are financed from the federal budget and linked this with the question: "What does Olaf Scholz actually do professionally?"

The FDP also wants to attract new attention in terms of social policy.

The demand put forward by Lindner is that there must be relief for the hard-working Hartz IV recipients, who have so far largely had to offset their additional earnings with their support.

The single parent who accepts a mini-job in addition to the state benefits must be allowed to keep more of this earnings.

The educational policy ideas of the Free Democrats are also provided with a socio-political reference in their short program called “Voting Call”;

it is about "renewing the promise of social advancement".

"Actionable guarantor for the political center"

In the coalition calculations for the time after election day, the considerations of whether the FDP would participate in a government have long since shifted to the question of which constellation this should be the case. In the election call that the FDP delegates decided on Sunday, there is talk of a “new role” for the FDP, which wants to see itself as a “capable guarantor for the political center”. The text shows that the Free Democrats would still like to work with the Union in a coalition, but "the Union is fuzzy and weakened in terms of content, although we share common positions".

The Free Democrats do not outright reject cooperation with the SPD and the Greens, but they set written conditions for it: "An increase in the tax burden" and a "relaxation of the debt brake" are to be excluded. Lindner praised the “fair, cooperative and successful” collaboration between the FDP and Armin Laschet in North Rhine-Westphalia. However, the CDU has “no clear course” on tax issues, and the Union is also not in agreement on staff. The SPD is strong because it shows itself "as it is in reality not at all", whereas the Union reveals "as it is in reality". Lindner finally argued in detail that whoever becomes the strongest force on September 26th does not automatically have a claim to the Chancellery.