The FDP does not want to think about Monday on election evening.

The party chairman Christian Lindner is celebrating a success: the FDP has never before achieved a double-digit result in two consecutive federal elections, Lindner calls out to the members in the party headquarters after the party's projections gave more than eleven percent of the votes - four years ago on their return to the Bundestag, it was 10.7 percent.

But the jubilation is greatest in the Hans-Dietrich-Genscher-Haus when the graphics on the television screens show that there will be no red-green-red majority made up of the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party in the next Bundestag.

Because there is the message that in any case the FDP will be needed to form a government, unless a grand coalition is to rule again.

Johannes Leithäuser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

But how close the FDP will come to the goal of participating in the next federal government, the numbers on Sunday evening do not provide any reliable information.

The Free Democrats face a dilemma.

It is about the question of how cooperation with the Greens can work in a three-party alliance - regardless of whether such a coalition is led by Chancellor Armin Laschet (CDU) or Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD).

The Greens had been the Free Democrats' favorite opponents for many years, long before they tried to label their competitor as a “prohibition party”.

Call for more fairness

In the long historical review, this was mainly due to the fact that the Greens ousted the FDP from its traditional third place in the German party system. In the middle political memory of the FDP it had to do with the fact that the Greens were increasingly seizing topics that had once been considered the domain of the Free Democrats. These included, above all, questions of the rule of law and human rights. Even in environmental policy, the FDP occasionally claims copyright for itself to this day; In his election campaign speeches, chairman Lindner liked to recall that the first environment minister was actually Genscher, who in 1969 set up an environment department in the Federal Ministry of the Interior for the first time.

On the evening of the election, the FDP chairman suggests a different tone: Even "Bündnis 90 / Greens" would have won votes in this election, they too, like the FDP, would have "waged an independent election campaign". This gives the previous political competitor and presumed future partner at least an equal. The FDP was chosen with its independence and its own "values ​​and projects", notes Lindner - and suggests that the Greens should also be given their political goals.

A short time later, in the television interviews, Lindner suggests that he would still prefer an alliance with the Union and the Greens than one with the SPD and the Greens. In any case, the FDP chairman asserts, his party will deal with the Greens in a fairer way than it was the other way around four years ago during the explorations on Jamaica. After these failed negotiations in autumn 2017, the FDP blamed the Union parties above all for the insults and disregards that were expressed in the roundtables, but the Greens also held part of the resentment. After Lindner's abrupt termination of the explorations, there was initially largely a lack of speech between the FDP and the Greens - apart from a few joint opposition initiatives,In most cases, however, the Left Party was also involved. It was more about parliamentary rights or common interests of the opposition than about converging political positions.