Following his party’s disastrous results at recent regional elections in Germany, Christian Lindner, leader of the liberal Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) issued an ultimatum to his coalition partners in the German federal government: change course on migration and the economy, or the government will collapse.
The FDP, which has been a member of the so-called ‘traffic light’ coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens since 2021, suffered heavily in elections in the eastern states of Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg, receiving 0.89%, 1.12%, and 0.83% of the votes respectively. In nationwide surveys it is polling at less than 4%, meaning it would drop out of the federal parliament, the Bundestag, for only the second time in its history following next year’s elections.
Experts believe that the FDP’s participation in the coalition has forced the party to take leftist positions, thereby losing the trust of its voters. The party is known to be conservative on issues such as migration, the economy, and the budget, and has criticised its coalition partners for dismantling nuclear power plants too quickly.
The radical green policies, the tax hikes, and the lax attitude towards illegal migration have evidently put pressure on the party leadership, and in a vote earlier this year, the members of the party only narrowly voted for the FDP to remain in the coalition and keep the government intact.
The FDP’s most recent results seem to have spurred Christian Lindner to act, saying the upcoming months will be the “autumn of decisions,” meaning the coalition will have to change course on migration, stabilise the budget, and set up a program to induce economic growth. Lindner said his party would evaluate the work of the coalition based on these conditions. He did not, however, explicitly say whether a negative evaluation would result in the FDP leaving the government.
Others have been more outspoken. Deputy chairman Wolfgang Kubicki said “either the traffic light coalition shows that it can draw the necessary conclusions from these elections, or it ceases to exist.” He warned that the FDP would “not wait until Christmas.” Regarding the economy, he demanded structural reforms, and regarding migration, he said that the Greens cannot keep blocking decisions to introduce a tougher asylum policy.
“The AfD has not become strong because it is so great, but because we, the traffic light, are also failing on migration policy,” he emphasised, pointing to the right-wing anti-immigration AfD party’s success and its first-ever state election victory in Thuringia.
The FDP’s Bavarian branch leader Martin Hagen went even further by saying, “you have to be ready to pull the plug,” adding that “Germany needs an economic and migration policy U-turn, which does not seem possible with this coalition.”
The recent regional elections have also highlighted the downward spiral of the Greens, who barely managed to pass the 5% threshold needed to enter the Saxony parliament and failed to gain any seats in Thuringia and Brandenburg. According to the latest nationwide opinion polls, the party’s support has dropped to single digits (9.5%) for the first time in years.
The most popular party in national polls is the centre-right CDU/CSU alliance with 32%, the AfD is second at 20%, and the Social Democrats are polling at 15.5%.
