While the SPD was able to end a string of election defeats in the Brandenburg vote on Sunday, the two other parties in Scholz’s coalition — the Greens and the FDP — continued their streak of dismal losses. The Greens crashed out of the Brandenburg state parliament, winning just around 4 percent, a drop of nearly 7 percentage points from the last election and below the 5-percent threshold needed to gain parliamentary seats. The FDP won less than 1 percent of the vote.
Those results, followed by poor outcomes in state elections earlier this month and the European election in June, puts the coalition parties — and particularly the FDP — in an existential crisis that is likely to make governing inside the divided coalition even harder. As a federal election looms a year from now, the ruling parties are likely to feel increasing pressure to appeal to their bases rather than seek compromise with one another.
Some FDP politicians are openly questioning whether it would be better to pull the plug on the coalition in a last-ditch effort to revive their parties fortunes — a move that could lead to an early election.
“At this rate, I don’t think this coalition will make it to Christmas,” Wolfgang Kubicki, a senior FDP parliamentarian and vice chairman of his party, told Welt in the aftermath of Sunday’s vote.
Lindner told reporters on Monday that the coalition’s future depends on whether it can move to curb the influx of asylum seekers, stimulate economic growth and reach a budget agreement in the coming months. Major decisions on these matters, he said, needed to happen by Dec. 21, the start of winter.
Lindner did not provide many specifics on those policy points, though he expressed openness to turning back asylum seekers at the border, an approach favored by the opposition, conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Scholz has so far resisted such a move, fearing it would infuriate Germany’s neighbors and clash with EU law.
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