Draft for the party conference's main motion: What the FDP wants to insist on in the traffic lights

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FDP top politicians Volker Wissing, Christian Lindner and Wolfgang Kubicki at an FDP party conference in Berlin-Kreuzberg (December 2021, before the vote for the traffic light coalition agreement): Into the final phase with the “economic turnaround”.

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Clemens Bilan / EPO

When Christian Lindner was recently asked in an interview about the break of the social-liberal coalition in 1982, he said an interesting sentence.

The top FDP politicians at the time, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Otto Graf Lambsdorff, had to accept the existence of the party "in order to achieve what was in the country's interest." That, added the FDP leader and Federal Finance Minister, “always impressed me.”

What Lindner said in Die Zeit sounded like a signal between the lines to the SPD and the Greens, a reminder of the risks the FDP had already taken in its history when it was about principles. At that time, the focus was primarily on economic and tax policy; in retrospect, the previously formulated Lambsdorff paper seemed like the founding act for the exit from the coalition, which led the FDP to the side of the CDU and CSU.

It seems that Lindner does not want the current coalition to end prematurely. “Today I am sure that the federal government will find common positions,” he added as a precaution in the interview.

Nevertheless, it is already a given that traffic lights will once again face major challenges in the coming months. From the perspective of the FDP, the smallest coalition partner and currently the weakest in the polls (around five percent), it will be decided whether the country's economic weakness will be overcome. "If we can do that, we will have done the country a service," says a leading liberal. Then, it was hoped, things would improve again for the FDP.

And if not?

Anyone who talks to FDP politicians in Berlin these days feels that one thing in particular is being built up: pressure. In Berlin-Kreuzberg, where the delegates meet almost as usual on April 27th and 28th, the clearest possible signal should be sent - the Liberals as the driving force for uncomfortable measures in the coalition.

A role that the FDP has been playing since the beginning of the coalition, sometimes to the annoyance of the other two partners, the SPD and the Greens.

The self-image of a force in the three-party alliance that sometimes goes against the grain also permeates parts of the draft of the FDP federal executive committee's key motion, which SPIEGEL has received. "Germany needs the economic turnaround," is the central sentence, which, from the Liberals' perspective, breaks down the problem into 14 pages and provides suggestions - including in the areas of growth, taxes, reduction in bureaucracy, energy, European policy, digital, education, shortage of skilled workers and defense .

Competition

According to one of the central statements, the country is “currently not competitive” and the economy is stagnating like no other industrial country. “Expansive bureaucracy, high energy prices, high levels of taxes and duties as well as an acute shortage of skilled workers are significantly slowing down the German economy,” says the analysis, which agrees with the latest forecasts from the leading economic institutes.

In their spring report they had just presented, they painted a rather bleak picture for the Federal Republic and scaled back their autumn forecast of 1.3 percent economic growth for 2024 to 0.1. There are not only economic reasons for this, such as weak exports, but also structural reasons, such as excessive bureaucracy, a lack of or insufficiently trained workers. A consideration that can also be found in a similar form in several places in the FDP paper.

Opinions within the coalition differ as to whether a trend reversal can be achieved. Economics Minister Robert Habeck of the Green Party said before Easter that energy prices and inflation had "calmed down, and we are working intensively on reducing bureaucracy."

But there are doubts in the FDP as to whether the Greens will find the right answers. One reason may also be that Habeck, as a specialist minister, is responsible for classic Liberal terrain. So it's also about liberal self-assertion. In the current lead proposal there is at least an indirect tip that seems to be directed against Habeck: What is needed is “more good economic policy and less boring Sunday speeches”, an economic turnaround towards more growth, progress and openness to technology. “We need a departure package that goes beyond everything that has been planned so far,” and the FDP will “direct its energy and focus” to this, it says explicitly.

But what does that mean specifically?

A point of contention with the SPD and the Greens is likely to be the question of how much the expansion of the social budget should cost.

welfare state

“An oversized social budget” puts a strain on “the financial possibilities of the state and society,” it says in the application paper.

Social spending accounts for around 46 percent of total spending in the 2024 federal budget and is by far the largest block of spending. The FDP is therefore calling for “a three-year moratorium on the welfare state.” During this time there should be “no new social benefits,” a formulation with which the Liberals want to arm themselves against the accusation of being a party of social coldness. So it's not primarily about cuts - it's about saying no to new services.

A project in this context is likely to be exciting: Will Green Party Family Minister Lisa Paus's favorite project, basic child welfare, even become a reality? There are strong doubts about this in the FDP, including in parts of the SPD, because of a new authority favored by Paus. Paus, on the other hand, recently told SPIEGEL that he was confident that the project would come before this legislative period. Discussions between the traffic light politicians and the ministry are currently ongoing in the Bundestag, where the law is located - there is no quick agreement in sight.

Four day week

One of the major media trend topics is the four-day week. Only recently, the negotiations between the railway board and the train drivers' union GDL, which were accompanied by strikes, brought the issue into the national headlines.

As expected, the FDP positions itself as a representative of the interests of medium-sized businesses: it is against a “general reduction in working hours, such as the four-day week with full wage compensation, an increase in the minimum wage to 15 euros or rigid weekly working hours”. These would endanger prosperity and punish top performers, so people are “clearly against such unrealistic demands”. The four-day week is also controversial among the SPD and parts of the Greens; Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) rejected a legal stipulation last year.

pension

In another field, the accompanying music for the upcoming party conference before Easter was intoned by the First Parliamentary Managing Director of the FDP parliamentary group, Johannes Vogel. In the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (FAZ) he explained that the coalition's current pension package was "not yet enough," so he called for the introduction of a "real stock pension." Heil and Lindner recently presented a concept for stock pensions, the so-called generation capital, for the federal government - albeit with less start-up funding than originally planned.

The demands in the lead motion read similarly to Vogel in the “FAZ”. They are committed to flexible retirement, “the abolition of the pension at 63 for those who have been insured for a particularly long time.” The FDP also wants to “reduce” partial retirement in early retirement, the so-called block model. Points where there could still be conflicts in the traffic lights with the SPD.

Working time measurement

One project that is still waiting to be implemented is working time recording in companies. The Federal Labor Court basically decided in 2022 that this had to be recorded. But a draft bill is stuck in the traffic light, and it will probably take at least the second quarter of this year before the project is moved forward.

The FDP rejects a “general and mandatory recording of working hours”. "Company and individual contractual agreements on trust-based working hours, home office and mobile working must continue to be possible - even without extensive bureaucratic documentation and control effort or even liability obligations for the company," is their demand in the lead proposal.

Debt brake

In the FDP's core area, tax policy, Lindner recently announced an increase in the tax allowance for this year. In addition, the FDP wants to reduce corporate taxes, the “effective tax burden” on corporate profits should be “a maximum of 25 percent,” and they want to “completely abolish” the solidarity surcharge, which would reduce the burden on companies by around twelve billion annually.

A classic is the FDP's commitment to the debt brake in the Basic Law. “With the FDP there will be no weakening or even abolition of the debt brake,” it says there. At the European level, there will be “no entry into a debt union,” and “we also reject Eurobonds.” The focus is therefore also on the current European election campaign, in which the federal party with FDP top candidate Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann is hoping for a respectable result. The Liberals recently achieved just over five percent; they are currently fluctuating between three and six percent in surveys, but there is no five percent threshold in the EU Parliament.

Defense policy

One of the top candidate's central issues is Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. The fact that the special budget of 100 billion was created for the Bundeswehr is also thanks to Lindner. “We must continually invest in the Bundeswehr and do everything we can to ensure that NATO’s two percent target can be achieved in the long term,” it now says in the lead proposal. Germany must “finally become capable of defending itself” and the necessary burdens cannot be met without a strong economy. “This is also why an economic turnaround is needed,” said the FDP.

But what about the troops' personnel requirements? Over Easter, Lindner declared that his party was against the reintroduction of compulsory military service.

The main proposal reads similarly. This would stand in the way of modernizing the Bundeswehr; instead, they want to strengthen the reserve and finally allow the Bundeswehr to provide information about its various activities at schools and universities.

Instead of mustering, more advertising for the soldier's profession. The FDP therefore wants to accompany Bundeswehr Day every year “with a central ceremony in Berlin in order to increase the visibility of the troops in society.”